DNA Special: How to identify fake Remdesivir

In our country, there are good people and there are bad people. There are still more good people and a handful of bad people. But these handful of bad people are hoarding and black marketing of essential medicines today.

At this time, if there is any demand for anything after oxygen in the country, then it is Remdesivir Injection. So now we will tell you how the shortage of this drug in the country arose? And how correct are the claims being made about this that this medicine treats coronavirus patients? Today we will tell you about it in simple language. First, let's tell you its price.

Currently, different companies are producing it in India and the price of one Vial ranges from Rs. 899 to Rs. 5,400. But many people are not getting a vial even after spending Rs 20,000. There are long queues of people in the shops where these medicines are also available. Now you must be wondering why suddenly the demand for this medicine in the country increased so much?

Remdesivir is an antiviral medicine. Antiviral means that these medicines attempt to cure infected cells in the body and prevent virus replication. In simple words, when the virus damages the lung cells in the body, these medicines are given to fight the virus and to prevent the damage. Last year, the Government of India approved the use of this drug on COVID-19 patients.

However, there are two things to be understood here. The first is that the Union Health Ministry believes while that this drug cures infected patients, this has not been confirmed in any research so far. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also agreed to this. The WHO has stated that no concrete evidence has been found that Remdesivir is a life-saving drug. And still, research is going on on this.

Despite this, the demand for this medicine in the country is very high. And two types of people are engaged in long lines to buy it. The first people are those whose family members are infected with coronavirus and doctors prescribe this medicine to them. Others are those who are buying this medicine in fear that if something happens to them or someone in their family tomorrow, they should have this medicine.

Now when people are ready to pay any price to buy this medicine, then it is being blacked marketed and people are also hoarding it. To summarise, there is no shortage of this medicine in the country, there is a lack of awareness among the people about it. Understand this with these figures.

The government has informed that the production of Remdesivir in the country has increased from 38 lakhs to 74 lakh vials per month. That is, the production capacity has almost doubled, but despite this, this medicine is missing from the market. Because it is being black marketed and people are also hoarding, which you can understand from this incident in Meerut.

There, 8 people were arrested on the charge of black marketing Remdesivir, who were selling a bottle of this medicine for up to Rs 30,000. These include an employee doing duty in a hospital ward, a guard and a bouncer. You cannot even think about what these people did. A patient named Shobhit Jain was admitted to this hospital in Meerut, to be injected. The family somehow made these medicines available to the hospital, but these people injected distilled water to the patient and sold Remdesivir medicine in the market for Rs 30,000. Soon after, the patient died. Think about the selfishness of these people who killed a patient. And it is not that this infection of selfishness is limited to Meerut only.

Police are arresting people across the country who are black marketing this medicine. Today, seeing this situation, we remember actor Dilip Kumar's film 'Footpath' in the year 1953, in which he played the role of a person who kills people for his selfishness. In this film, it is shown that when the disease is spreading in the city, Dilip Kumar hoards medicine and lets people die. After this, when he realizes that by doing this, the smell of corpses has started coming out of his body, then he breaks down.

Even today, something similar is happening in our country. That's why we want you to see this scene of this 68-year-old film today.

At present, fake Remdesivir medicines are also being sold in many states. So now we tell you some things, which can help you differentiate between fake and real medicine.

In counterfeit medicine, Rx is not written in front of Remdesivir. Rx is a Latin sign, which means take. Doctors also write Rx in front of medicines in their prescription, which means they are asking you to take the medicines. The first letter of the word vial in fake Remdesivir medicine isn't capitalised Apart from this, there will be many mistakes in spelling.

The easiest way to differentiate between real and fake Remdesivir medicine is, you must read the things written behind it. There is no Red Warning Label behind in fake medicine.

These are some of the pointers that will help you save yourself and your loved ones from buying fake Remdesivir.