India, women who died after sterilization: rodenticide found in medicines

Of FQ | November 15, 2014 | Daily fact

A view drug manufacturing unit of Mahawar Pharma Pvt Ltd which was sealed by FDA on Thursday.

Sterilizations with drugs that contain a powerful rat poison. This was revealed by the health authorities of India, after 14 women have died since the beginning of November after sterilization procedures. Operations that were not carried out in houses or makeshift rooms, but by qualified doctors and within state hospital structures. The news was confirmed by an official of the Health Department of the state of Chhattisgarh, where the deaths occurred: "From an initial examination - he said - it seems that the health of women operated in the health field has worsened after taking the medicines contaminated with zinc phosphide, a substance used as rat poison."

The local government has thus opened an investigation, entrusting it to an ad hoc commission which, within a maximum of three months, will have to present a report that brings out the responsibilities and reconstructs the events. The investigations will focus on the health campaign launched a week ago, when 80 women were offered birth control surgery. Eighty surgeries in less than 5 hours. Another 122 women are still hospitalized in the area, after undergoing tubectomy a week ago.

Precisely as part of the investigation opened into the 14 deaths, the police carried out several blitzes inside pharmaceutical industries and wholesale shops that supply used medicines from government medical teams, thus managing to establish the origin of the drug which, administered to the victims, caused their deaths. It is an antibiotic that comes from the Mahawar Pharma company, which has factories in the state capital of Chhattisgarh.

By carrying out chemical analyzes on the product, the investigators discovered that, among its components, there is also zinc phosphide, a substance also found during an inspection inside the pharmaceutical company's factories. The poison, left unattended and probably used as a rat poison, could have contaminated the medicines during the production process. All stocks have been seized by the Indian authorities and factory directors have been arrested, but there are fears that many of these drugs have been sold to the government and are now in Indian hospitals.