An Indian company's four cough syrups were linked to 66 children's deaths in the Gambia, but these syrups weren't sold in the Indian market... Brut journalist Labanya Maitra explains.
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00:00Four Indian cough syrups were linked to 66 children's deaths in the Gambia.
00:06The loss of these young lives is beyond heartbreaking.
00:10In July, multiple children started developing acute kidney injuries.
00:15They were all younger than five years old.
00:17They allegedly started falling ill three to five days after taking a paracetamol syrup.
00:22That's when the Gambian government started their investigation.
00:26The children couldn't pass urine, had fever and vomiting, which eventually led to kidney
00:30failure.
00:31But it wasn't clear exactly which syrup caused this.
00:34By August, 28 children had died.
00:38In September, the Gambian authorities started collecting these syrups from the children's
00:42homes.
00:43And on the 9th, the government banned all paracetamol syrups in the country.
00:47The WHO, however, hadn't found any evidence against the syrups at the time.
00:53They were leaning towards E. coli infections or severe flooding in the country as possible
00:58causes for the deaths.
00:59About a month later, the WHO released an alert.
01:03For four contaminated medicines identified in the Gambia that have been potentially linked
01:10with acute kidney injuries and 66 deaths among children.
01:16The four medicines are cough and cold syrups produced by Maiden Pharmaceuticals Limited
01:24in India.
01:25These were the four syrups that were identified by the WHO.
01:29Although the exact link between the deaths and the cough syrups was still unclear, the
01:35WHO said that the product samples had unacceptable amounts of these toxic contaminants.
01:41Experts say that these substances are not allowed in food or drugs and are actually
01:46used in antifreeze, brake fluids and other industrial applications.
01:50But they were also used as a cheaper alternative to glycerin in some pharmaceutical products.
01:57Their effects?
01:58Abdominal pain, inability to urinate, vomiting, diarrhoea and acute kidney injury, among others.
02:06The acute kidney failure can start within 8 to 24 hours of exposure to a lethal dose
02:12and result in multi-organ failure within a week.
02:15The Indian government and drug regulator launched an inquiry into the matter and samples were
02:19sent for testing.
02:20The samples will be sent to the Central Drug Laboratory in Calcutta.
02:27If anything goes wrong, a strict investigation will be carried out.
02:36None of the four cough syrups were available for sale in India.
02:39And authorities said that in case they did happen to be in the Indian market, their sale
02:43would be halted immediately.
02:45While the contaminated products have so far only been detected in the Gambia, they may
02:52have been distributed to other countries.
02:55WHO recommends all countries detect and remove these products from circulation to prevent
03:04further harm to patients.