Wuri Bailo Keita took his two-year-old daughter Fatoumatta to the hospital after she got a fever. There, she was diagnosed with malaria and given a prescription for paracetamol syrup before being sent home.
She passed away less than a week later.
In a string of incidents connected to four cough syrups made in India, the infant is only one of 69 Gambian kids who have died of acute renal failure since July.
The growing issue has brought attention to weaknesses in the tiny country’s healthcare system in West Africa, which has led to concerns about potential deficiencies in the global pharmaceutical industry.
“She could not eat anything and she was oozing blood from her mouth and nose”, Keita, a 33-year-old carwash attendant, told AFP, recounting his daughter’s suffering.
“At some point, I was praying for God to take her life.”
Following the start of a police investigation and a request for the health authorities to suspend an accused company’s import license, President Adama Barrow delivered a speech to the entire country on Saturday.
In addition, Barrow pledged to amend drug-related laws and commended the health ministry’s efforts to stop more fatalities.
But as the death toll continues to rise, rage and terror are growing.
“President Barrow should sack the health minister, but instead of sacking him, he was praising the minister,” said Keita, the grieving father.
“We want justice for these children.”
Social media has been swamped by criticism of the healthcare system and by photos of the children who have died, most of whom were aged under five.
“It’s time for the government to step up and stop these products,” Mariama Kuyateh, a 30-year-old mother who lost her son Musa in September, told AFP.
“If they don’t, and other syrups enter the country, it will be terrible.”
No test lab
When the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) issued an alert last Wednesday regarding four syrups produced by Maiden Pharmaceuticals of India, the deaths shot to international prominence.
According to laboratory tests, diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol were present in “unacceptable amounts.”
According to the EPA, the hazardous effects of these drugs include “acute renal injury which may result in death.”
After beginning their own inquiry in July, the Gambian health officials on September 23 requested a recall of all medications containing promethazine syrup or paracetamol.
They suggested that E. coli germs might be to blame for the deaths.
India’s health ministry said late Thursday it had been informed of the WHO’s findings last month and was awaiting the results of its own lab tests on the four drugs.
Maiden Pharmaceuticals was not licensed to distribute the four products in India and had only manufactured and exported them to The Gambia, it said.
“It is a usual practice that the importing country tests these imported products on quality parameters, and satisfies itself as to the quality of the products,” the ministry said.
But Barrow promised on Saturday to address The Gambia’s lack of a national laboratory to test for food and medicine safety.
Following the WHO notice, AFP reached out to Maiden Pharmaceuticals for comment, but they did not answer.
Failed terribly
Domestic detractors charge Barrow of failing to defend the public and supporting watchdogs who ought to have been fired.
The opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) criticized Barrow’s “five-minute address” to a “traumatized nation left to wonder what other pharmaceuticals are on the market that may be fake or unsafe for use.”
Nancy Jallow, of an NGO called Global Bridges, said she was appalled that top officials such as Health Minister Ahmadou Lamin Samateh and the head of the Medicines Control Agency, Markieu Janneh Kaira, were still in their jobs.
“We signed a social contract with Adama Barrow and his number one role is to protect the most vulnerable, and he has failed miserably,” she told AFP.
Additionally, she demanded that all pharmaceutical imports be stopped “until the government of the Gambia can construct a facility that can test drugs.”
The Gambia Bar Association and other groups have pushed for the investigation to be carried out by impartial specialists.
Poor medical treatment
The reality of a country with extreme poverty and a lack of basic protections that are taken for granted in other countries is behind the political controversy.
The Gambia is the smallest nation in continental Africa, and the World Bank estimates that roughly half of its citizens are living in poverty.
On the UN Human Development Index, the country comes in at just 174th place out of 191 nations.
A 2020 UN evaluation stated that the pandemic had “revealed the deficiencies in the nation’s healthcare system,” which had already inadequate health institutions.
The UN noted a dearth of health workers, a lack of basic equipment, and little competence.
The Gambia only had 0.1 physicians per 1,000 inhabitants in 2019, less than a hundredth of the number in Canada, according to World Bank data.
According to UNICEF, the under-five mortality rate in The Gambia is 49.4 per 1,000 live births, which is higher than Germany’s and France’s respective rates of 3.7 and 4.4.
