The case of the MP charged with supplying defective blood bags to hospitals continues to rumble, reports Reem Leila On 6 November the Cairo Court of Cassation ordered the retrial of MP Hani Sorour, CEO of Hayedelena for Advanced Medical Industries Company (HAMIC), his sister Nivan and five Health Ministry officials. In April, the Appeals Court had found all seven not guilty of supplying defective blood bags, a judgement that Prosecutor-General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud contested in June. In a press release Abdel-Meguid argued that the original verdict failed to take into account technical reports showing that supplied blood bags failed to meet national standards, and pointed to procedural flaws in the defence. Prosecutors claim that 300,000 blood bags containing anti- coagulants produced by HAMIC were found to contain bacteria as well as severe technical defects, posing serious risks to blood donors as well as patients. Following reports that Sorour was intending to travel to Germany Abdel-Meguid issued a ban on any of the defendants leaving Egypt. Sorour told Al-Ahram Weekly that his planned trip to Germany was for business purposes, and totally unrelated to the case. Sorour claims to be the victim of a conspiracy involving major players in the pharmaceutical industry. "My international firms have been awarded ISO certificates for the last eight years and European customers are fully satisfied with our products. Our Egyptian factory is scheduled to obtain its ISO certificate soon, and it will be valid until 2015. For 20 years no governmental or private hospital in Egypt or abroad has rejected our products." Sorour denies that he placed any pressure on the Ministry of Health's Central Administration to accept his company's products. "The company submitted the best offer and the ministry accepted it," he says. The case began in January 2007 when Soheir El-Sharqawi, a Health Ministry employee, claimed 300,000 defective blood bags were in the ministry's storage. Abdel-Rahman Shahin, official spokesman at the Ministry of Health, responded by reassuring the public that Egypt's blood supplies were "100 per cent" safe. He did, however, concede that 37,000 potentially defective blood bags had been distributed to blood banks and hospitals. The ministry had halted the supply of bags from the same batch in July 2006 after receiving complaints, though Shahin argued that "flaws discovered in the submitted bags did not affect blood quality or characteristics". The initial case against Sorour and his co-defendants was first heard by Judge Ahmed Ezzat El-Ashmawi. When El-Ashmawi died suddenly mid-hearings his place was taken by Mustafa Hussein Abdullah, who issued the not guilty verdict. The distributed bags were approved by the Health Ministry's National Organisation for Drug Control and Research (NODCR) which certified that they met international standards. Yet days after their distribution blood banks and hospital officials began to report anomalies. They found the bag sizes larger, the needle thicker and the tube attached to the bags shorter than in the bags with which they had previously been supplied. A technical report prepared by professors from five national universities concluded that 13 per cent of HAMIC's single blood bags and nine per cent of double blood bags failed to meet standard specifications. That the anti-coagulant had deteriorated in so many bags implies that the NODCR-approved validity date had been falsified. MP Sorour continues to argue that the bags met all obligatory criteria, and that the only objections from health professionals are on optional, not statuary, requirements. "I trust our judiciary system and I am sure of my innocence as well as that of my sister's and Health Ministry employees," he says.
