Two pharmacy assistants from the hospital that first detected overdiluted intravenous chemotherapy will testify at an Ontario legislature committee today.
It was a chance discovery by a pharmacy assistant at a Peterborough, Ont., hospital that revealed cancer drugs administered to 1,200 patients in Ontario and New Brunswick were diluted.
Technicians Craig Woudsma and Judy Turner of Peterborough Regional Hospital are scheduled to speak at Ontario's standing committee on social policy, which is looking into the oversight, monitoring and regulation of non-accredited pharmaceutical companies in the province.
Last Tuesday, officials from the Peterborough hospital told committee members a red flag went up when an assistant checked the labels on IV bags provided by Marchese Hospital Solutions.
It was the first day that the hospital used the new supplier. A pharmacy technician noticed a difference between Marchese's label for gemcitabine and the one from the previous supplier, Baxter.
The technician began to question what the final concentration per millilitre was, which led to a series of phone calls and emails among hospital staff and the Durham Regional Cancer Center and Marchese, the committee heard.
Patients at four hospitals in Ontario and one in Brunswick received IV bags of the chemotherapies cyclophosphamide and gemcitabine that were overdiluted between three and 20 per cent, according to Cancer Care Ontario.
Medbuy executives
Yesterday, MPPs at the committee heard executives of Medbuy, the London,-based company that awarded the contract for intravenous chemotherapy drugs to Marchese Hospital Solutions in 2011.
Medbuy officials said Marchese pharmacists didn't account for the overfill of saline and assumed the entire bag would be given to a single patient.
Last week, Marita Zaffiro, the president of Marchese Hospital Solutions, appeared before the same committee and said it prepared pre-mixed cancer medications under the supervision of qualified pharmacists and according to the contract it was awarded by Medbuy.
MPPs have been asking hospital staffers and officials from the health ministry and pharmacy college about the regulatory grey zone surrounding Marchese Hospital Solutions' mixing services, which was not accredited by the Ontario College of Pharmacists.
Health Canada and the provinces and territories say they are working to improve oversight, including inspections of companies like Marchese Hospital Solutions that aren't federally licensed as manufacturers or provincially accredited as pharmacies, while they look for a long-term solution.
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