Two-thirds of the world's surgical instruments are made in the city of Sialkot in northern Pakistan, the BBC report said, and 70% of the UK's registered manufacturers are based in the city.
All surgical instruments have to meet regulatory standards but only one of the more than 180 NHS trusts and boards conducts rigorous tests on every tool - Barts and the London NHS Trust.
They reject almost 20% of tools as unsafe for use.
The regulator is the Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
In a statement, the MHRA said "it has no evidence that non-compliant instruments are being supplied to the NHS", but added that if there were such evidence, it had "a range of powers and sanctions available to deal with the problem".So, after the CQC, we now have another ineffective NHS regulator.
Professor Brian Toft, a government adviser on patient safety, told the programme that if procurement officers in both the NHS and private hospitals in the UK knew of the conditions in which the surgical instruments were being made, they would "faint at the thought of it".
"I cannot believe that anybody in the NHS knows this is going on," he said.
It's only too evident that they don't. They should. Here we have NHS management and regulator not doing their jobs, and putting patients at risk.
Again.
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