Families of 70 kids who passed away from the medication are requesting roughly $230,000 in compensation for each kid.
A high court in the Gambia has begun hearing cases over the deaths of several children who ingested cough syrup produced by Maiden Pharmaceuticals, an Indian pharmaceutical business, last year.
According to Salieu Taal, head of the Gambia Bar Association, 19 plaintiffs filed the complaint in July on behalf of the victims, who were five years old or younger, in the West African nation, as reported by the French news agency AFP.
Health officials reported that at least seventy Gambian children who had taken the over-the-counter drug passed away from kidney failure in 2022, shocking the 2.5 million-person nation.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) connected the deaths to Maiden Pharmaceuticals syrup in October of last year, stating that the medication included “unacceptable” amounts of the chemicals diethylene and ethylene glycol, which are found in brake fluid for automobiles.
The families are suing Maiden Pharmaceuticals, Atlantic Pharmaceuticals (which imported the drugs into the Gambia), the Ministry of Health, Attorney General Dawda Jallow, and the Medical Controls Agency (MCA) of that African nation, demanding an admission of guilt regarding the children’s deaths caused by the tainted medications.
The plaintiffs also want that the MCA acknowledge that it did not complete its legal duty to evaluate the medication’s safety. They are requesting compensation for each child in the amount of 15 million dalasis, or roughly $230,000.
None of the five defendants showed up for the Tuesday hearing in the capital, Banjul, according to AFP. The Health Ministry, MCA, and attorney general filed a request to reschedule the trial’s start date, which was originally set for July, but Justice Ebrima Jaiteh, the high court judge, denied it.
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The trial was postponed until November 7 by Justice Jaiteh, who said that the three state defendants who did not show up showed a lack of diligence.
In September of last year, in response to allegations of fatalities, the Gambia issued a recall of many cough and cold drugs as well as all goods made by Maiden Pharmaceuticals, the company that was suspected of contaminating the syrups.
In July, a government investigation taskforce declared its conclusions, stating that the deaths were caused by four cough syrups that were imported from India. At the time, the Minister of Health for Gambia, Ahmadou Lamin Samateh, stated that there were problems with the medication’s import and regulatory inspections, starting with the products’ lack of MCA registration.
Last year, the Indian government suspended Maiden Pharmaceuticals’ licence and opened an investigation into the four cough treatments. Two other Indian producers, Marion Biotech and QP Pharmachem, had their licences revoked and their exports stopped in the wake of the Gambian event and the deaths in Uzbekistan.
The businesses have refuted the accusations levelled against them.
Following allegations that the cough syrup manufactured by Riemann Labs was responsible for the deaths of at least six children in Cameroon, a country in West Africa, in March, India ordered the pharmaceutical business to discontinue operations in August.
