JAIPUR/JODHPUR: Vials “for animal treatment only” were not only supplied to the government MDM Hospital in Jodhpur but also allegedly administered to about 159 patients over the past 10 days. The grave medical negligence was noticed by a resident doctor on Sunday when he read the label on a vial before using it.Health minister Rajendra Rathore said the hospital administration suspended a pharmacist of the hospital that day itself. Principal secretary (medical education) J C Mohanty also initiated an inquiry headed by Dr Suchitra Gaur (professor of pharmacology), Jaipur. The committee will find out how many injections made their way to the hospital and how many were administered to patients. It will also investigate how the injections reached the hospital drug store.The medical education department said if the reports published in some vernacular dailies about the negligence were found to be true, stern action would be taken against the accused.“We stopped the supply immediately and seized the remaining stock,” said Deepak Verma, superintendent of MDM Hospital. He said so far no untoward reaction had been reported.On June 14 the hospital had received from the market 1,000 vials by the name of Pepenum, comprising drug Meropenum . Two days later the vials were sent to drug distribution centres.Verma said the prescribed quantity of Meropenum administered to humans is between 500 mg and 1 gm. The quantity mentioned on the vials was 1 gm. “This means the drug is meant for humans but was wrongly labelled ‘For Animal Use’,” he said. “Moreover, there was no ‘after reaction’.”The vials were manufactured by Pushkar Pharma , which also said the drug was not meant for animals and was labelled wrongly. “It was meant for human use,” said the company.Verma said veterinary medicine packs come with the photograph of either a dog or a cow, essentially in pursuance of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. “But this drug Pepenum did not have any such mark,” said Verma.Sources from the vet department also confirmed no vial or drug with this name was being used on animals.But it was not clear how the vials marked “Not for Human Use & For Animal Treatment Only” reached the hospital’s drug distribution centres.Meropenum, considered a life-saving antibiotic drug, is administered to patients with high infection that is not treatable by any other drug. The hospital had obtained the vials from the open market through tenders since the government did not have adequate stock.M/S Agarwal Drug Distributors , which had supplied the vials, was empanelled by the medical college.