Hyderabad: Government-run Hospitals have become the biggest clinical trial labs in the state with NIMS topping the charts.
An analysis of clinical trials registry of ICMR revealed out of 571 clinical trials from the year 2007 to till date carried out in the state, 50 percent of these trials were conducted at NIMS hospital followed by Gandhi Hospital, Osmania General Hospital, MNJ Cancer Institute and Niloufer Hospital.
The NIMS tops the charts with 21 clinical trials conducted in 2019 alone out of 200 in the state.
As many as 339 serious adverse cases of deaths were reported in the country last year, only one case of abortion was reported in NIMS during the trials.
Choosing government hospitals to conduct clinical trials is sensitive issue according to experts since most of the patients who visit these hospitals are illiterate, poor, come from a lower middle class family said former central information commissioner Prof Madabhushi Sridhar.
“The consent and informed consent issues have to be verified. If the person who is signing the consent form is not informed properly or does not know what he is put on to, he may sign or put thumb impression and give gus consent. The government has to look into this aspect,” he said.
While NIMS ethics committee chief Dr N Kavitha Reddy said, “ Most of the clinical trials are ICMR-related in NIMS and only a few are sponsored by drug companies. The trials mainly related to oncology , neurology and nephrology wings,” she said.