“Rat poison killed women at India’s sterilisation camps” - Investigators

Health officials in India have said that medicines contaminated with rat poison must have been responsible for the sad deaths of more than 13 women who were attending government-run family planning and sterilisation camp at the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh last Saturday, November 8.

PHOTO CREDIT: AFP/Strdel

News had it that the women fell ill on Monday, two days after surgery at a so-called family planning camp at a village. Such camps are held regularly across India as part of a long-running effort to control India's booming population.The women are paid to undergo the risky sterilisation procedures

Reports of investigations into the disaster said quantities of zinc phosphide, a component of rat poison, were found at the factory, where antibiotics distributed at the two camps on Saturday and Monday were made earlier this week.

Briefing on the official inquiry, Dr. Ashutosh Tiwari, secretary of the local branch of the Indian Medical Association in Bilaspur, where the deaths occurred was quoted said: “We have seen some toxin reaction in some patients, not infection. Renal failure, falling blood pressure, in all cases issued with this drug. What they were given was not antibiotic but a toxin,”

The Guardian UK also quotes him as saying: “There was something in it which we use to kill rats in India. It is this that caused the mortality,”

The Press Trust of India reports that all antibiotics bought from Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, a factory in the eastern city of Raipur, have now been withdrawn.

Police say they entered the Mahawar factory on Wednesday with the help of a security guard, but at first found nothing wrong. Drug inspectors returned the next day and shut it down.

Around 20 women who attended the camp remain in intensive care and the death toll is expected to rise.

According to the Guardian UK report: "More possible victims of the contaminated antibiotics arrived at hospitals from villages in Bilaspur district, about 60 miles (100km) from Raipur, on Thursday and Friday, some clutching medicine strips from Mahawar and complaining of vomiting, dizziness and swelling.

At least one of the strips of antibiotic was from the same batch as those handed out at the mass sterilisation held on Saturday in the same district in Chhattisgarh state, one of India’s poorest.

Tiwari said two other patients, both male, had died of total renal shutdown after taking antibiotics from the same batch. They had been prescribed the drugs by local practitioners for minor problems.
Speaking in police custody, Ramesh Mahawar, managing director of Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, said he was innocent.

“The situation has been twisted in a wrong manner. We are just being harassed,” said Mahawar, who has been making drugs for 35 years".