When Wuri Bailo Keita’s two-year-old daughter Fatoumatta developed a fever, he took her to hospital the place she was identified with malaria and despatched dwelling with a prescription for a paracetamol syrup.
Lower than every week later she was lifeless.
The toddler is only one of 69 Gambian kids to die of acute kidney failure since July in a sequence of circumstances linked to 4 Indian-made cough syrups.
The widening scandal has highlighted flaws within the tiny West African nation’s healthcare system, in flip elevating questions on potential loopholes in world pharmaceutical commerce.
“She couldn’t eat something and he or she was oozing blood from her mouth and nostril”, Keita, a 33-year-old carwash attendant, informed AFP, recounting his daughter’s struggling.
“Sooner or later, I used to be praying for God to take her life.”
President Adama Barrow made a nationwide handle on Saturday after the police launched an inquiry and well being authorities have been informed to droop the import licence of a suspected firm.
Barrow additionally promised to replace drugs-related legal guidelines and praised the work of the well being ministry in stopping additional deaths.
However worry and anger are mounting, and the demise toll remains to be rising.
“President Barrow ought to sack the well being minister, however as an alternative of sacking him, he was praising the minister,” stated Keita, the grieving father.
“We wish justice for these kids.”
Social media has been swamped by criticism of the healthcare system and by pictures of the kids who’ve died, most of whom have been aged underneath 5.
“It is time for the federal government to step up and cease these merchandise,” Mariama Kuyateh, a 30-year-old mom who misplaced her son Musa in September, informed AFP.
“If they do not, and different syrups enter the nation, it is going to be horrible.”
– No check lab –
The deaths have been catapulted to world prominence final Wednesday when the UN’s World Well being Group (WHO) issued an alert over 4 syrups made by Maiden Prescribed drugs of India.
Lab exams discovered “unacceptable quantities” of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol, the WHO stated.
The poisonous impression from these substances contains “acute kidney harm which can result in demise,” the company stated.
The Gambian well being authorities, after launching their very own investigation in July, on September 23 ordered a recall of all medicines containing paracetamol or promethazine syrup.
They’ve cited E.coli micro organism as a attainable reason behind the deaths.
India’s well being ministry stated late Thursday it had been knowledgeable of the WHO’s findings final month and was awaiting the outcomes of its personal lab exams on the 4 medication.
Maiden Prescribed drugs was not licensed to distribute the 4 merchandise in India and had solely manufactured and exported them to The Gambia, it stated.
“It’s a normal follow that the importing nation exams these imported merchandise on high quality parameters, and satisfies itself as to the standard of the merchandise,” the ministry stated.
However The Gambia has no nationwide laboratory to check for drug high quality and meals security — an absence that Barrow on Saturday vowed to redress.
Maiden Prescribed drugs didn’t reply to AFP requests for remark after the WHO alert.
– ‘Failed miserably’ –
Home critics accuse Barrow of getting failed to guard the general public and standing by watchdogs who ought to have been sacked.
The opposition United Democratic Celebration (UDP) criticised Barrow’s “five-minute handle” to a “traumatised nation left to marvel what different prescribed drugs are available on the market that could be faux or unsafe to be used.”
Nancy Jallow, of an NGO known as International Bridges, stated she was appalled that prime officers resembling Well being Minister Ahmadou Lamin Samateh and the top of the Medicines Management Company, Markieu Janneh Kaira, have been nonetheless of their jobs.
“We signed a social contract with Adama Barrow and his primary position is to guard probably the most susceptible, and he has failed miserably,” she informed AFP.
She additionally known as for a complete halt to pharmaceutical imports “till Gambia’s authorities can construct a facility that may check drugs.”
Others voices, together with the Gambia Bar Affiliation, have insisted that the inquiry be carried out by unbiased consultants.
– Weak healthcare –
Behind the political row is the fact of a rustic deep in poverty missing most of the safeguards that elsewhere are taken as a right.
The Gambia is the smallest nation in continental Africa, and almost half of its inhabitants lives beneath the poverty line, in accordance with the World Financial institution.
The nation ranks a mere 174th out of 191 international locations on the UN Human Growth Index.
Its already weak well being establishments have been hit onerous by Covid, with a 2020 UN evaluation saying the pandemic had “uncovered the shortcomings within the nation’s healthcare system”.
The UN flagged restricted experience, a scarcity of primary gear and a power lack of well being professionals.
In line with World Financial institution knowledge, The Gambia in 2019 had simply 0.1 physicians per 1,000 individuals — lower than a twentieth of the numbers in Canada.
The Gambia’s under-five mortality charge is 49.4 deaths per 1,000 reside births, in accordance with UNICEF, in comparison with 3.7 deaths in Germany and 4.4 in France.
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