empanelment of drug testing laboratories - Kerala Medical Services ...

SECTION I
INTRODUCTION
1.1. The Kerala Medical Services Corporation Limited - KMSCL is a fully owned
Government of Kerala company set up in 2007 for providing services to the
various health care institutions under the Department of Family Welfare and
Health. One of the key objectives of the KMSCL is to act as the central
procurement agency for all essential drugs and equipments for all health care
institutions under the department.
1.2. Kerala, one of the progressive States in India, has been in the forefront of
public health initiatives. The health care indices are comparable to those of
the developed nations. With the creation of large numbers of trained doctors
and nurses, extensive networks of hospitals, and a primary health centre
(PHC) in every village, Kerala had achieved the status of a health model. It
has better access to health services than most populations of the lessdeveloped
world. In short, the hall mark of Kerala model is low cost of health
care, universal accessibility and availability even to the poor sections of the
society.
1.3. With the setting up of the Kerala Medical Services Corporation Ltd, the
shortage of essential drugs in the hospital has become a matter of past. The
KMSCL procures around 952 essential drugs and other medical supplies. The
drugs are stored in about 20 warehouses in all the districts and distributed to
nearly 1500 government institutions. The drug samples are drawn from the
warehouses and sent to empanelled labs without identity details, for QC
testing. The Corporation has at present 8 NABL accredited empanelled
laboratories. The objective of this EOI process is to increase the number of
labs to be empanelled to a minimum of 25 this time.
1.4. The Corporation is in the pursuit of improving the quality standards of the
drugs administered in the hospitals. A series of measures for this purpose was
introduced recently. Now the standing instruction is that as and when a new
batch arrives, all warehouses are to draw the samples and sent by courier to
the QC section of the Head Office within 24 hours. The QC, in turn, have to
despatch the samples of every batch arriving from different warehouses to
empanelled labs within 48 hours. There is also coding to ensure that the
identity of the batch and the manufacturer are kept secret, till the results are
obtained and published. Multiple samples from the same batch are randomly
sent to more than one empanelled lab to test the efficacy of the labs and
KMSCL: EOI for Empanelment of Drug testing Laboratories Page 2