- Tuesday, March 04, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
A joint investigation by the US’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the health authorities of The Gambia has suggested a strong link between the death of many children in the African state and the consumption of made-in-India cough syrups that were allegedly contaminated.
In October, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had issued an alert stating that the four cough syrups being supplied to The Gambia by the India-based Maiden Pharmaceuticals Ltd were of substandard quality and claimed that they were linked to the kids’ deaths.
A CDC report, which was released on Friday (3), said, “This investigation strongly suggests that medications contaminated with Diethylene Glycol [DEG] or Ethylene Glycol [EG] imported into the Gambia led to this Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) cluster among children.”
“Patients with DEG poisoning can experience a range of signs and symptoms, including altered mental status, headache, and gastrointestinal symptoms; however, the most consistent manifestation is AKI, characterized by oliguria (low urine output) or anuria, progressing over 1-3 days to renal failure (indicated by elevated serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen),” the report added.
According to the CDC, they were contacted by The Gambia’s health ministry to assist in characterising the illness (multiple cases of AKI and deaths in children), describing the epidemiology, and identifying potential causal factors and their sources last August.
The report also said that in past DEG outbreaks, manufacturers have been suspected of substituting DEG in the place of more expensive, pharmaceutical-grade solvents.
“Among reports of AKI associated with DEG-contaminated medical products, this is the first in which DEG-contaminated medications were imported into a country, rather than being domestically manufactured,” it said.
It further said medications for export might be subject to less rigorous regulatory standards than those for domestic use.
“Simultaneously, low-resource countries might not have the human and financial resources to monitor and test imported drugs,” it stated.
India’s minister of state for health Bharati Pravin Pawar said in a reply to Lok Sabha or Lower House of the parliament on February 3 that after testing, the samples of the cough syrups have been declared to be of standard quality.
The samples were found to be negative for both DEG and EG, Pawar had said in a written reply to a question.
