Currently, Cofepris is investigating the company, in charge of the intravenous feeding bags that are suspected of being contaminated with the bacteria. Klebsiella oxytoca. While the investigation continues, the health authority temporarily suspended the company.
History repeats itself. In May 2019, the health authority investigated the same company for a similar case: 57 premature babies and 12 adults fell ill in Jalisco, after an infectious outbreak in 15 hospitals. Two of them died. On that occasion, parenteral nutrition products were contaminated with the bacteria Leclercia adecarboxylata.
On June 6, 2019, Cofepris temporarily suspended the company’s activities at its Hospital Products Mixing Center in Jalisco. That year he imposed eight economic sanctions for a combined amount of 3.7 million pesos.
The sanctions ended between September 5, 2019 and January 7, 2020, according to data from the Cofepris Resolutions and Sanctions registry. However, Productos Hospitalarios SA de CV continued to win contracts during that period.
On June 17, 2019, it received two contracts via direct award from ISSSTE Sonora for 3,389 and 1,566 pesos for the acquisition of medicines and pharmaceutical products. Four days later he signed another for 20,980 pesos. This health institution accumulated dozens of contracts in 2019 for minimum amounts, from less than 100 pesos to a few thousand pesos, all by direct award.
In addition, between September 26 and 29, 2019, at least 22 additional contracts were directly awarded for a total of 319,063 pesos. Even on September 30, the date on which two of the sanctions ended, the company signed 31 more contracts, which totaled 355,084 pesos.
The ISSSTE of Sonora continued to hire that company throughout 2019. A year earlier, the National Institute of Pediatrics, of the Federal Ministry of Health, did the same, according to contracts available on the National Transparency Platform (PNT).
On April 27, 2018, she signed a contract with the company for 31.4 million pesos for the acquisition of antimicrobial medications, although that year she was also sanctioned and the procedure concluded on May 16. A day later he signed another contract for 62.9 million pesos won in a public tender.
Productos Hospitalarios SA de CV, known as SAFE, registers another sanction in 2020. However, the Civil Hospital of Guadalajara, Jalisco, the state where the 2019 outbreak occurred, signed a contract of 50.4 million pesos on September 19, 2020, almost a month before the sanction process that year concluded with a fine of 422,450 pesos. The award was for the service of parenteral nutrition mixtures and supplies.
Another example is the Health Institute of the State of Mexico. Through a public tender, it was awarded a contract for 15.3 million pesos on April 13, 2020.
(Photo: Mario Vázquez/AFP)
But this company even accumulated other sanctions: in 2017 it added four for a total of 438,108 pesos. In 2018 there were at least two, which totaled 156,090 pesos.
Productos Hospitalarios is a subsidiary of the Mexican pharmaceutical company PISA. It is located in Guadalajara, Jalisco and describes itself as Mexico’s number 1 in technovigilance and pharmacovigilance, observation strategies and monitoring of pharmaceutical products to guarantee the safe use of supplies and identify adverse incidents.
The company was sought in different ways to find out its position, but until the closing of this information no response was obtained.
