Kit won’t be handed over to third party: Zafrullah
We can submit the kit anywhere the drug administration directorate wants us to but the recipient must have its own laboratory and skilled manpower, he said
Gonoshasthaya Kendra Trustee DrZafrullah Chowdhury on Sunday said the coronavirus testing kit his organisation had developed would not be handed over to a third party.
We are not interested in going to a consulting firm and thus raise the kit price, he told The Business Standard hours after addressing an emergency press briefing.
We can submit the kit anywhere the drug administration directorate wants us to but the recipient organisation must have its own laboratory and skilled manpower, Zafrullah said.
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He said it would be the best to test the kit at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University lab, adding that the authorities there had agreed for testing it too.
"The drug administration directorate can also ask the Bangladesh Medical Research Council to do the test. We can submit our kit anywhere but will not pay any absurd fee," explained the Gonoshasthaya Kendra founder.
We tested the kit and it works, he said.
He also said many, including Indians, had tried to develop this kit but did not get good results.
"We were diligent in our work and achieved good results. The drug administration directorate should test the kit and verify our claim itself."
Zafrullah said an Iranian official had talked to him on Sunday morning. "As many as 10 lakh kits like the one we developed are used in Iran every day."
Earlier in the day, he told an emergency press briefing that the drug administration directorate had not accepted the kit when a three-member Gonoshasthaya Kendra team took it there.
Inventor of the kit Dr Bijon Kumar Sil was among the delegation and one of the three members was not even allowed inside the drug administration directorate, Zafrullah said.
"The drug administration directorate told us to get our kit verified by the Clinical Research Organisation (CRO). The CRO is a contract-based organisation and we need to pay them for testing.
"This way, the drug administration directorate is actually maintaining its business interests. It associates with a business organisation, which facilitates transactions," he explained.
The public health activist asserted that his organisation had not resorted to bribery in the last 48 years.
"And we will not, in the future," he said.
"It does not matter if our product is launched or not. We have not bribed ever, and we will not. We will continue to fight," the noted physician reiterated.
