Banjul Gambia (Commonwealth Union)_When three year old Lamin Sagnia developed a fever, his mother gave him a paracetamol syrup recommended by the neighbourhood pharmacy. Having developed kidney failure, two days later Lamin was dead. Mohamed Kirjera, also three years old, had similar symptoms, took the pharmacy recommended syrup, developed kidney failure and a week later was dead.
These are not uncommon stories in Gambia anymore, because once the cough syrup is ingested, the children develop kidney failure and go onto dialysis. Nearly all these children die. Grieving parents who are left behind with no closure, wonder what they have done wrong to bring on the death of their toddler – simply by administering a pharmacy recommended cough syrup, the common thing to do.
It has now been revealed that a known toxic is lurking in a cough syrup manufactured India, which is being administered to children. Over seventy children have died since last July in Gambia in just under three months with similar symptoms, all of who have taken the cough syrup. The deaths have baffled doctors who are fighting hard to get the toxic syrup banned.
These were the first of nearly three hundred children who died in 2022 due to contaminated cough syrups, though not all of them were made in India. Calling it an epidemic, these seasoned doctors have never seen anything like this before.
Given that it was the rainy season, health authorities first thought it was contaminated water that caused the kidney failure, but doctors pointed out otherwise. The children were being poisoned. The Acute Kidney injury suffered by these children were linked by global health officials to cough syrups made in India which were contaminated with ethylene glycol (EG) and diethylene glycol (DEG). It is the deadliest total poisoning on record from toxins observed by scientists for decades.
While the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, Gambian doctors are not sitting still. They are pushing health officials to test for chemical poisoning, urging them to ban the sales. The WHO stepped in to help with the testing, which showed the syrups contained extremely dangerous levels of toxins and had been sold in bottles fraudulently labelled as a WHO approved product.
While pharmaceutical experts have continuously warned of the lax oversight of Indian manufactured drugs, India’s health regulator states there’s no fault in its medicines. India supplies nearly half of the generic medicines used in Africa. But it also highlights how poor countries face immense difficulties in identifying and banning harmful products from the market, even with deadly consequences.
