A parliamentary committee in The Gambia has suggested prosecution of the Native indian manufacturer of coughing syrups suspected of causing the deaths of at least 70 kids in the country.
It said Maiden Pharmaceuticals should be held responsible for exporting what it known as contaminated medicine.
The WHO had issued an alert in Oct advising regulators to prevent the sale of the syrups.
Maiden Pharmaceuticals had denied the particular allegations.
Government labs in India stated their tests on the syrups found they were “complying with specifications”. An Native indian official said a week ago that the WHO was “presumptuous” in blaming the syrups.
But the global health body told the BBC it was only following its requirement and “stands with the action taken”.
After days of investigation, the particular Gambian parliamentary panel has now recommended that authorities should get tough measures, which includes banning all First Pharmaceuticals products in the nation and taking legal action against the company.
The committee mentioned it “is confident that Maiden Pharmaceuticals [is] culpable and should be held accountable for transferring the contaminated medicines”.
“The results remain the same using the previous reports which usually indicates that Promethazine Oral Solution, Kofexmalin Baby Cough Viscous, thick treacle, Makoff Baby Coughing Syrup and Magrip N Cold Viscous, thick treacle were contaminated with diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol, inch the parliamentary committee said in its record.
Diethylene glycol plus ethylene glycol are usually toxic to humans and could be fatal if consumed. But the panel added the exact scientific cause of the children’s deaths was still under investigation.
The panel also wanted the country’s Medicine Control Agency to ensure all of medicines imported in to the country are properly registered and background record checks conducted on manufacturers – including going to their facilities.
The report also revealed inadequacies within the country’s healthcare system urging the government to strengthen it and offer better equipment plus medicines to the state’s hospitals.
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What happened?
In late This summer, The Gambia recognized an increase in cases of acute kidney injury among children under the age of five. The federal government later said about 69 children got died from these injuries.
The WHO then identified four of the Maiden Pharmaceuticals’ medicines as potentially from the deaths of the Gambian children and issued a global alert.
After the news shattered in October, India said that it was investigating the products and ordered Maiden Pharmaceutical drugs to stop production in its main factory in the northern condition of Haryana.
Upon 13 December, Doctor VG Somani, India’s drugs controller general, wrote a notice to the WHO saying the samples it tested at a federal government laboratory “were discovered not to have been contaminated” with the compounds.
“As per the test reports received from [the] federal government laboratory, all the manage samples of the 4 products have been found to be complying along with specifications, ” he added.
The test results are being further analyzed by a panel of Indian experts.
The senior adviser in order to India’s information and broadcasting ministry informed the BBC last week that the WHO had been “presumptuous” in blaming the particular cough syrups for that deaths of the kids.
“Subsequent inspections, assessments and studies by Government of India’s notified bodies and technical team have demostrated that WHO’s presumptuous statement was false and incorrect, ” said Kanchan Gupta, adding that the health body had inch[jumped] the particular gun without legitimate scientific reasons”.
Indian produces a third of the world’s medicines, mainly in the form of generic medications.
Home to some from the fastest growing pharmaceutic companies, the country is known as the “world’s pharmacy” and meets a lot of the medical requirements of African countries.