Dhaka: Bangladesh on Thursday imposed a temporary ban on a pharmaceutical company after 24 children, who reportedly consumed paracetamol syrup produced by it, died of renal failure in recent weeks.
"The company was also ordered to withdraw its products from the market and publish an announcement in three daily newspapers immediately in this regard," a Drug Administration (DA) department official said.
His comments came as the DA officials yesterday sealed off a medicine factory of Rid Pharmaceuticals in central Brahmanbaria, a day after an official investigation was launched into the deaths of two dozens children.
A Health Ministry spokesman said the seven-member investigation committee, comprising officials, doctors and drug specialists, started collecting samples of vitamin and paracetamol suspension from different areas and if nothing harmful was found in the products of the company, it would go for production again.
"The committee has been asked to submit its report by the next three working days," he said.
Mizanur Rahman, managing director of Rid Pharmaceuticals, told The Daily Star that soon after getting the orders they withdrew the paracetamol suspension and vitamin from the market "though we did not use any harmful compound in our products".
Officials at the Dhaka Children's Hospital said that 26 patients with renal complications were admitted to the facility in the past one-and-half months and the figure was higher than normal admission.
Director of the state-run hospital, Professor AR Khan, said as the number appeared higher than usual one of their doctors tested a drug at a private laboratory and reported to
the Health Ministry after finding "poisonous compound" in it.
Two children with renal complications died in the hospital in the past one week, taking the kidney failure toll to 19 this year, an official of the hospital said.
Normally around 30 to 40 patients with renal failure are admitted here every year and of them five to seven die, he added.
Professor M Moazzem Hossain of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital told the New Age that eight children had been admitted to their Paediatric Nephrology department with complaints of kidney failure and "four of them died".
Doctors of the two facilities said the babies were given paracetamol syrup, an analgesic (pain-killer), procured from local medicine shops in their villages at different places while some of the victims also consumed vitamin syrup.
DA officials said the analgesic syrup, contaminated with diethylene glycol, injured the kidneys of some 339 children in 1990 and most of them died sparking a wide public outcry at that time.
World Health Organisation (WHO) sources said in recent years, deaths from medicines adulterated with diethylene glycol were reported in South Africa, India, Nigeria,
Argentina, Haiti and Panama.
Several paediatricians and drug administration officials, however, advised people not to be panicked about all the brands of these two drugs, saying that reputable pharmaceutical companies generally do not adulterate their products.
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, July 23, 2009, 12:48