Daily Independent (Lagos)
Yinka Shokunbi and Augustine Madu-West
8 December 2008
Kano — Ten drug dealers were at the weekend sentenced to one-year imprisonment each by a mobile court in Kano for selling My Pikin Teething Powder, as pediatricians in Lagos alerted that there are other killer drugs in town.
My Pikin alone has claimed the lives of more than 50 children nationwide in the past three months.
The mobile court was set up by the Kano State Government to try those who sold it.
They were arrested at Muhammad Abubakar Rimi Market and given an option of fine, according to the state Hospitals Management Board Director General, Ibrahim Adamu Yakasai, who spoke through the board's Public Relations Officer, Abba Sani Yola.
Yakassai said the government will protect lives, and explained that the court was set up specifically to prosecute sellers of child killer drugs in the state.
He reaffirmed that the board supplies only genuine drugs, and pledged that My Pikin will not be found in government hospitals in the state.
A Committee has searched government hospitals for fake medicines and doctors have been told not to prescribe My Pikin to patients.
Yakassai implored parents to desist from self-medication and to give their children only drugs prescribed by qualified doctors.
Down in Lagos, pediatricians who treated some of the children who had acute renal failure (ARF) at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) alerted that My Pikin may not be the only cause of the epidemic.
Eighteen deaths from ARF were recorded in LASUTH within two weeks.
Elizabeth Disu, Head of Pediatrics Department, and Olusegun Gbelee, Consultant Pediatric Nephrologist, said in interviews that "some of (the victims) never heard about My Pikin and so did not take it at all. They gave a history of ingesting other drugs yet came down with ARF and died."
Disu noted that some of the children were far above teething age"and were not under the said medication that was being alleged as causing kidney failure. We saw an 11-year-old who was under treatment for cerebral malaria but suddenly developed acute renal failure and within two days died."
"There were other children above three years old who took Paracetamol tablets and cough mixtures in addition to anti-malarial drugs to treat suspected malaria but came down with renal failure and died."
Both pediatricians dismissed the likelihood of overdose of Paracetamol in the children "because Paracetamol poisoning is not commonly seen in this country, and we don't see much of self suicide."
But they did not rule out the possibility of contamination of Paracetamol with diethyleneglycol.
Gbelee said autopsy showed that the kidneys, lungs, and brains of the children were all destroyed by diethyleneglycol.
"We carried out autopsies which revealed that the children had kidney shock and their lungs were filled with massive amount of fluid instead of air, making exchange of oxygen impossible while the brain was also congested with what we call cerebral oedema," he explained.
LASUTH first noticed a rise in ARF on November 19 during the clinical review meeting of the pediatric board.
Disu recalled how "attention was drawn to the rising number of cases seen within the week which at the time was five. That was unprecedented because the hospital does not often see more than five of such cases in a whole year, and even at that, there would have been a diagnosis leading to an acute stage.
"In this instance, most of the children had no prognosis or history of serious sickness but just suddenly came down with symptoms of renal failure and that was sad."
Hospital records showed that the common complaints of children were blotting or swellings, vomiting and stooling, reduced urinary output, fever and cough.
Both Disu and Gbelee urged the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to screen and analyse all commonly used children drugs.
"Many of the syrups are produced using propyleneglcol," Gbelee warned.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Daily Independent. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
