LONDON – Rights groups, doctors and politicians have been urging theNational Health Service to start an inquiry into whether tools used inhospitals were made with child labor.
The NHS has admitted it cannot be sure where surgical tools and equipmentcome from. According to reports, they could be the product of childexploitation in Pakistan. Reports suggest that under-aged children havebeen working in workshops, with boys getting paid less than $1 a dayto produce the surgical tools for export in the city of Sialkot, Punjabprovince, where Pakistan’s major surgical instrument production is based.
NHS Supply Chain prohibits child labor from its “first tier” suppliers,many of which are based in the United Kingdom, although, the company statedthat it did not know which manufacturers were used in Pakistan.
“For many of the instruments I use, I have no reliable way of ensuring theyhave not been made by children.” said Dr. Mahmood Bhutta, an NHS surgeonand founder of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) Medical Fair andEthical Trade Group.
According to the report, Britain is the third largest buyer of surgicaltools from Pakistan.
“We still don’t know where most surgical instruments coming into the NHSare made. But we do know a lot of them will have come from Pakistan. Iwould be amazed if at least some of the instruments used in the NHS weren’tmade in these small workshops,” he added.
The NHS Supply Chain’s spokesperson, said in a statement that the companyremained committed to addressing labor standard issues with suppliers.
“We are aware of the potential for labor standards abuses to occurwithin supply chains [for] surgical instruments, which is why we have takensteps to increase requirements for supplier due diligence in our contractsand worked … to develop guidance and systems to address these issues,” shesaid.
“We believe that the supplier code of conduct, the LSAS [Labor StandardsAssurance System] approach and the guidance and advice that we haveprovided to our suppliers has been effective in shining a light on theissue across the industry, however, we are not complacent and we recognizethat it will require continued effort and vigilance across the sectorto raise and maintain standards uniformly.”