Gambia: The World Health Organization warned that four cough and cold syrups manufactured by Maiden Pharmaceuticals in India may be responsible for the deaths of 66 children in Gambia in a statement released on Wednesday.
The UN health organisation also issued a warning, stating that it was “likely” that the infected pharmaceuticals had been transported outside of the West African nation.
The four in issue cold and cough medicines “have been potentially connected with acute renal damage and 66 paediatric deaths,” WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
For the relatives of these children, the loss of their lives is unbearably tragic.
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WHO was “doing further inquiry with the company and regulatory authorities in India,” Tedros stated.
The four medications are Promethazine Oral Solution, Kofexmalin Baby Cough Syrup, Makoff Baby Cough Syrup, and Magrip N Cold Syrup, according to the medical product alert released by WHO on Wednesday.
The notice claimed that laboratory analysis of product samples “confirms that they include excessive quantities of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol as impurities,” and that “to yet, the indicated producer has not offered guarantees to WHO on the safety and quality of these items.”
It added that the harmful effects “may include abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, difficulty to pass urine, headache, changed mental state, and severe renal injury which may lead to death” as a result of exposure to those drugs.
After at least 28 infants died of renal failure, The Gambia’s Health Minister urged hospitals to stop using a syrup paracetamol last month, awaiting the results of an inquiry.
The company had only given the contaminated pharmaceuticals to The Gambia, according to information from India’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organization, according to the WHO.
However, the UN agency stated in an email that “the supply of these products through informal or uncontrolled markets to other countries in Africa, cannot be ruled out.”
It further stated that the firm might have utilised the same tainted material in other items that were distributed locally or abroad.
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Therefore, there is a chance of global exposure.
In order to protect patients from future harm, Tedros encouraged prudence and urged all nations to work to “identify and remove harmful products from circulation.”
On September 9, the Gambian health ministry advised against using paracetamol syrup, a month after investigators found that at least 28 infants, aged five months to four years, had passed away from acute renal failure.
On July 19, the investigation had been launched. The time of the children’s deaths was not specified.
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