"For many, it feels like deja vu. "This is an issue which has been going on for 90 years or more," says Naseem Hudroge, an analyst at the World Health Organization's team on substandard and falsified medical products. In that time, more than 1,300 people many children under 5 have died of this type of contamination. And it's happened all over the world, including in the U.S. in 1937 when over 100 people died from an antibiotic that had been formulated as a liquid syrup."
"He was heading back to his hotel during a work trip when he saw a message about children dying in The Gambia in West Africa. "I had a feeling this was something quite serious, but the scale of the problem was not clear from that email - that came out over the next few days," Hudroge recalls. Children were arriving at the hospital with acute kidney injury."
Contaminated cough syrup has caused multiple child fatalities in India after industrial chemicals entered medicines. Historical incidents span at least 90 years and have killed over 1,300 people, many children under five. The problem has occurred worldwide, including a 1937 U.S. poisoning and recent outbreaks in The Gambia, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan. In 2022, contaminated syrups led to dozens of deaths and hundreds more across several countries, with victims presenting acute kidney injury and inability to urinate. Most modern cases occur in low- and middle-income countries, prompting renewed global alarm and investigation.
Read at www.npr.org
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