Chennai: Four held for illegal sale of Amphotericin-B used to treat black fungus

CHENNAI: After the demand for remdesivir fuelled black market sale of the anti-viral in the city, Liposomal Amphotericin-B, a drug used in the treatment of mucormycosis (black fungus), is now being sold at inflated rates illegally.
While a special team of the St Thomas Mount police district on Saturday arrested a fivemember gang for advertising online to sell Amphotericin-B, the Anna Salai police on Sunday arrested four people for selling the drug at exorbitant rates.Eight vials of Ambisome Liposomal Amphotericin were seized from them.
Investigation revealed that they had procured the drug for Rs 15,000 per vial from Bengaluru and sold them for Rs 40,000 to Rs 60,000 a vial through agents. The gang had procured the vials through connections with drug suppliers from Karnataka. Police sources said the black market deals were done mainly on WhatsApp.
The market price of Amphotericin-B in Chennai is around Rs 8,000 per 50ml vial and each infected patient requires 4-6 vials for treatment depending on their weight and severity of infection. Tamil Nadu had 1,738 confirmed cases of mucormycosis on Monday morning, of which 1,188 patients were treated in government facilities. The state has reported 84 deaths from the infection. The government has around 10,000 vials of Amphotericin-B, and more than 40,000 tablets and 4,000 vials of Posaconazole (alternate drug) in stock, said health minister Ma Subramanian on Monday, stressing that the state had adequate stock of drugs to treat the disease.