The deaths we cannot ignore

THE merchants of death are perhaps at work again, and by Tuesday, no fewer than 25 children had been reportedly killed by a mixture, called My Pikin, allegedly produced by a Lagos-based pharmaceutical company.

This is barely two months after the Chinese milk scandal, which killed many children across the globe. The Chinese adulterated milk contained a chemical meant to boost protein content of milk.

The recent deaths in Nigeria were recorded at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Zaria, and the University College Hospital, Ibadan, where the children were taken to after consuming My Pikin.

Besides the deaths, over 50 other children had been diagnosed and hospitalised by Tuesday for chronic kidney damage after taking the killer teething mixture.

The death toll might be higher, going by the fact that many people in this part of the world don‘t patronise hospitals and will rather go to traditional healing homes or spiritualists. So, there is a need for further investigation to establish the actual mortality figure in the epidemic.

The ‘killer‘ drug, according to its manufacturers, is made from paracetamol B.P. 120 mg and Diphenhydramine HCL B.P. 6.25 mg. But a preliminary test carried out by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, has revealed that besides paracetamol, the drug contains diethylene glycol. This is deceitful on the part of the manufacturer.

Diphenhydramine is essentially an antihistamine used in children‘s drugs because of its ability to induce sleep and bring relief to frayed nerves. Diethyene glycol, on the other hand, used as a building block in organic synthesis, has been responsible for a number of poisonings across the globe.

But the chemical still finds relevance because of its sweet taste and ability to lower the freezing point of solution and elevate boiling point, making it suitable for use in hot climates.

There was the infamous 1937 Elixir Sulphanilamide disaster in the United States, in which 107 people died after taking sulphanilamide dissolved in diethylene glycol. This single incident provided impetus for the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938.

In 1985, a small number of Austrian wine producers were found to be adulterating their product with diethylene glycol to give the wine a sweeter and more full-bodied taste.

This, however, led to the collapse of Austrian wine exports. As a result, stricter regulations were imposed on Austrian wine makers.

And in 1990, in Bangladesh, many of the children who were given paracetamol syrup contaminated with diethylene glycol, died after developing kidney failure.

It is good that NAFDAC has sealed the production line of the errant company. But the issue should not end just there. The country deserves to know whether the action of the company was deliberate or a human error. The company should be made to pay compensation to the families of victims, to serve as a deterrent to others.

A national survey should also be conducted in all major hospitals to determine the extent of the epidemic and the level of compensation to be paid. This is not the first time such a thing will happen in the country.

It will be recalled that a similar incident of paracetamol contamination in the 1990s led to the death of over 200 children. This calls for stricter regulations by NAFDAC. Children are our treasures; our heritage and future hope. We cannot afford to treat their lives and their welfare with levity.

People who will deliberately sacrifice these children on the altar of money should be treated as vipers. No reasonable person plays with a viper. It is either you kill a serpent or it kills you. Merchants of deaths should not be treated with kid gloves.

It is sad that the Federal Ministry of Health did not act early enough on a report of the epidemic made to it by LUTH. This speaks volumes about our emergency preparedness in the country.

The first incident of the epidemic occurred at LUTH on November 3, 2008 and nothing was done by the FMH, until on Tuesday, when the NAFDAC Director-General, Prof. Dora Akunyili, briefed the press on the epidemic.

There could be more to this current episode than meets the eye. The press should rise to the challenge and conduct further investigations into it. It was the investigation done by the British Sunday Times in 1976 that exposed the danger of Thalidomide.

The drug, a sedative introduced in the 1950s, caused congenital deformities in babies across the globe. In Britain alone, hundreds of ‘Thalidomide babies‘ were born before the danger was realised and the drug withdrawn from the market.