Steve Dada
28 November 2008
Lagos — National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) yesterday said it had traced and arrested the chemical dealer who sold propyleneglycol chemical to Barewa Pharmaceuticals, makers of My Pikin paracetamol, which was allegedly contaminated with diethyleneglycol.
The chemical dealer, whose name was not given, allegedly owns Tranxell Ltd located at Shop 2, Jimoh Oseni Close, Ilasamaja area of Lagos State.
The agency also said three more children have died at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), Zaria, from the killer baby teething mixture, bringing the casualty figure to 28.
NAFDAC had on Wednesday alerted the nation on the killer drug which was earlier reported to have killed 25 children in three locations across the country.
A statement by NAFDAC Director-General, Professor Dora Akunyili, claimed that the agency in the course of its investigation was able to trace the supplier of the killer chemical and that the agency had already closed down the shop.
Only one batch of the contaminated chemical consisting of about 3,000 bottles was produced on August 10, 2008 while NAFDAC's last inspection of Barewa was on August 8, 2008, she said.
She said the death of three more children is a signal that the country "must be on her toes as more deaths are likely to be recorded as more people, particularly in the villages, who might have used the drug on their children may not find it easy to locate good hospitals on time."
"It is likely to be a tip of the iceberg, considering the fact that most women in the villages would not have the means to take their babies to the hospitals," she noted.
However, she claimed that the agency had not limited its investigation to My Pikin alone, but "right now we are testing other brands of paracetamol syrup from all over the country to ensure that none is contaminated with diethyleneglycol."
Still on the efforts to ensure that fewer casualties are recorded, Akunyili said the agency has not relented in its efforts to protect the lives of children, as NAFDAC officials have since yesterday morning moved to the local governments and villages to "mop up" the teething mixture.
Reacting to the accusation by the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) that the agency should be blamed for negligence resulting in the death of the children, the NAFDAC DG said it is not possible for the agency to carry out inspection daily, weekly or monthly.
"NAFDAC does not inspect any production outfit for food, drug or cosmetics for more than once a quarter except if there is a problem. It is impossible for NAFDAC to inspect production outfits by batch daily, weekly or monthly. It is also not done anywhere in the world," she said.
She said LUTH, instead of reporting its observations to just the Minister of Health, should have informed the regulatory agency too because NAFDAC has pharmacovigilance centre in such hospitals.
"LUTH is supposed to report straight to us when the problem started so that we would be swift in addressing it to forestall more deaths. Unfortunately, they wrote to the Ministry of Health," she said.
"Government carved out NAFDAC from Ministry of Health Drug and Food Directorate in 1993 to eliminate such administrative bottle necks so that the agency can act swiftly and more efficiently on food and drug issues and report activities to the Minister who can advise," she noted.
According to her, companies all over the world make mistakes from time to time, "but the point is how they manage the crisis when it happens with prompt and effective crisis management that rapidly reassures the public and also removes all possibility of danger to the public".
She said that denying or passing the blame "helps no one. In this case of My Pikin, NAFDAC has taken prompt and effective crisis management of the situation, by closing down the production outfit, ordering the withdrawal of all products from the market, and informing the public."
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