Substances linked to child death in Gambia traced in Indonsia, Gambia’s MCA downplays ‘connection’

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By ADAMA MAKASUBA

Indonesia has also announced the trace of the Indian syrup chemicals linked to child death in Gambia on Thursday, October 20, 2022.

But in The Gambia Medical Control Agency (MCA) made remarks believed to have downplayed the possible link of the substance to the deaths of 70 children from Acute Kidney Injury (AKI).
Sheikh Tijan Jallow, an official of MCA said that a handful of the dead children didn’t consume the medication.
According to La Prensa Latina, up to three “hazardous” chemicals in children with AKI are found, two of which are present in Indian-manufactured syrups suspected to be linked to dozens of deaths in Gambia.The Mid-South’s largest bilingual newspaper published in Spanish and English quoted the Indonesian health ministry::

“Under-five patients with AKI were detected to have 3 hazardous chemicals (ethylene glycol-EG, diethylene glycol-DEG, ethylene glycol butyl ether-EGBE).”

The US-based media outlet in Memphis reported that these include Promethazine Oral Solution, Kofexmalin Baby Cough Syrup, Makoff Baby Cough Syrup, and Magrip N Cold Syrup.

However, the comment of the Gambia’s MCA official at a press conference is widely considered to be a way of trivialising a deadly incident amid demand for justice for the AKI child victims and arrest of individuals responsible.

He told reporters at a news conference held at the medical drug store in Kotu that a good number of the AKI child victims’ urine, blood and stools samples contained the presence of bacteria and virus, adding most of the victims are from rain floods communities in the country.

“We are trying to establish which medication they took and as I made it clear a good number of kids died without taken any medications. But just to clear some of the shadow of doubts so that the general public will know is out of the 70 kids that died some of the kids died without taken the medication and out of that 70 kids some kids took medication that we have tested and the medication are not affected. They are safe to be used, but the kids only took those medication and died,” he said.

“Science is evidence-based, so we cannot narrow our angle only on medications because we were in the rainy season and we know for the past fifteen to twenty years, The Gambia has been experiencing highest rain fall in this season. Because we’ve realised ninety-five percent of the kids that died are from the flooded areas.

“So, some water sample, urine and blood samples were collected from the kids that were showing the same symptoms. So, after analysing those samples, 90 to 95% of those samples showed the presence of six different bacteria pieces and three different virus pieces. We’ve also collected three samples from kids that are having the AKI and out of those three kids, when we analysed their stool samples, all of them have bacteria presence in their stools,” he added.