Joint pains

Joint pains

Johnson & Johnson must compensate patients for faulty hip implants.

For people suffering painful wear and tear of the hip joint, hip replacement surgery where a prosthetic joint replaces the age-worn one, is usually a great blessing that enhances the quality of life. But if the prosthetic is defective, it will end up hurting far more than helping. This is the nightmare visited upon around 4,700 patients in India implanted with Johnson & Johnson’s ASR device. The product was globally recalled in 2010 but here, as an expert committee set up by the Union health ministry found eight years later, the company has shamefully failed its obligation to compensate and aid the victims or even come clean with them.

Moving forward it will be critical how effectively the ministry directs state-level committees to receive complaints about the implant. So far the regulatory oversight has proved abysmal. The national joint registry, a centralised database for recording all such surgeries and monitoring their outcomes, has not worked to expectations. Of the 4,700 patients that the company says received the faulty implant, as many as 3,600 remain untraceable. Toxic levels of chromium and cobalt and other debris of this implant may have left many of them in need of corrective surgery and other medical procedures, which should definitely get a government push.

As for who should pay for it all, the expert committee has recommended a base amount of Rs 20 lakh for compensation per patient. By comparison, in the US court cases concerning the implants have seen J&J being told to pay $2.5 billion to around 8,000 citizens, and $247 million to six patients. By making the company pay fair compensation in India too, government must send out clear message that the lives of citizens here are equally valuable.