Dhaka, July 30: When Kohinur Akhter’s 19-month-old baby boy came down with a fever and cough a little over a week ago, she had no idea the medicine she gave him to ease the pain would put him on his death bed.
Now Akhter has been told by doctors in Bangladesh that there is no hope for her infant son and he will die within days just as 26 other children have done in the past six weeks after taking paracetamol laced with a killer chemical.
“It started as a simple fever. We took Safin to the doctor and gave him the medicine as instructed. Hours later he stopped urinating, then the next day he was barely conscious,” she told AFP through tears as she clutched her dying boy.
Tests ordered by the Bangladeshi government have shown that the paracetamol syrup that Safin and the 26 dead children had taken was mixed with the toxic chemical diethylene glycol, used mainly in textile and leather dyeing.
The substance, which almost certainly caused kidney failure in the infants according to doctors, was used by a local drug company instead of the safe solvent propylene glycol, which is 10 times more expensive.
Akhter, a farmer’s wife from eastern Bangladesh, said she wanted those who had laced the paracetamol to know that although they saved money, she was about to lose one of her two sons.
“We borrowed 5,000 taka (72 dollars) to bring him to Dhaka to try and save him, but they killed my son before anything could be done. They’ve killed him,” she said.
Mohammad Hanif, the senior paediatrician at Dhaka Shishu Hospital, where some of the sick children have been brought, was outraged that history was repeating itself.
In the early 1990s, Hanif watched thousands of infants die in Bangladesh after they too consumed toxic paracetamol.
“What’s happening to these children at the moment is a chilling reminder of the past when thousands — maybe four to five thousand — died needlessly,” he told AFP.
“The symptoms are the same in the children who have swollen eyes and heavy breathing. They stop urinating and then they die.”
After two weeks ago seeing a spike in the number of parents bringing their children to the hospital from two eastern districts, Hanif took his suspicions straight to the top.
“I told the health minister that the children’s kidney problems could be from toxic drugs,” he said.
“I’ve got nothing but praise for the way he handled it. He shut down the factory in question straight away. If he hadn’t have done that we could have seen mass deaths on the same scale as last time.”
The management and pharmacists from the drug company are in hiding and no arrests have been made.
Despite his quick action, Hanif said he felt helpless for those already affected and called on the authorities to enforce drug laws that were created after the 1990s tragedy.
At that time a few people were arrested but officials are unable to say what happened to them, with no charges ever laid against the dozen or so drug companies responsible — although some were closed down.
The maximum sentence for adulterating drugs in Bangladesh carries a 10-year prison sentence or 3,000-dollar fine.
“Unless the drug laws in this country are tightened we will see a procession of cheap deaths. There needs to be exemplary punishment this time,” Hanif said.
For Safin, though, any such punishment will come too late.
“What can I do?” his mother said. “I am praying to Allah, but the doctors say he will die. A doctor also gave him this medicine. We are poor, we have no choice but to listen to doctors. Only God can help us now.”
–Agencies