The Supreme Court on Monday granted one week to the expert panel of Union of India to file its reply on the faulty hip implants or replacements supplied by a multinational company.

The apex court had taken up a PIL filed on Arun Goenka that has sought investigations into faulty hip implants and compensation for victims. On October 5, the court, while hearing the PIL filed Goenka, a businessman, had sought the views of the Centre’s expert panel on the faulty hip implants of J&J and directed that a report be filed within two months.

On Friday, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare approved the formula for compensation based on the recommendations of the expert committee under the chairmanship of Dr Arun Kumar Agarwal,
ex-dean and professor of ENT, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi. Patients who received faulty hip implants from Johnson and Johnson will receive compensation of Rs 30 lakh to Rs 1.22 crore, depending on their age and extent of disability. The SC has asked the court to produce the report before it.

The committee had suggested that at least Rs 20 lakh be paid to each patient. The formula that was approved provides for higher compensation amount by factoring in the age and degree of disability of the patient. It adds a sum of Rs 10 lakh towards “non-pecuniary damages”.

The compensation is for those patients who had received (prior to August 2010) faulty Articular Surface Replacement (ASR) hip implants manufactured by M/s. DePuy International Limited, U.K (M/S Johnson & Johnson Pvt Ltd).

The hip implants were used on patients across the country for several years before the company in 2012 was asked to stop import. In the faulty implants, accelerated wear of metal on metal resulted in higher levels of cobalt and chromium in the blood which lead to toxicity. Metal ions damage tissues and organs, experts found.

—Indian Legal Bureau