Tablets linked to the deaths of more than a dozen women who visited a sterilization camp in eastern India are likely to have contained a chemical compound commonly used in rat poison, a senior official in Chhattisgarh State said yesterday.
Preliminary tests of the antibiotic Ciprocin tablets were found to contain zinc phosphide, Bilaspur District chief administrator Siddhartha Pardeshi told reporters.
The antibiotics were handed out at a mass sterilization held a week ago. At least 15 women have died, most of whom had attended the camp.
Photo: Reuters
Pardeshi said authorities had tested the tablets after being informed that zinc phosphide was found at the nearby factory of Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, a firm at the center of investigations into the deaths at the government-run family planning camp.
Pardeshi said samples had been sent to laboratories in Delhi and Kolkata to verify that the tablets were contaminated as the preliminary report suggested.
“Symptoms shown by the patients conform with zinc phosphide [poisoning],” Pardeshi said.
More possible victims arrived at hospitals from villages on Thursday and Friday, some carrying medicine produced by Mahawar and complaining of vomiting, dizziness and swelling, a doctor at the district’s main public hospital said on Friday.
The new patients had not attended the sterilization camps, but had consumed drugs produced by Mahawar, the doctor and another official said.
The state government said it had seized 200,000 Ciprocin 500 tablets and more than 4 million other tablets manufactured by Mahawar.
Police have arrested the firm’s managing director Ramesh Mahawar, and his son. The firm has said they are innocent.
India sterilizes more women than any other country. Indian birth rates fell in recent decades, but population growth remains among the world’s fastest.
Sterilization is popular because it is cheap and effective, and sidesteps cultural resistance to and problems with the distribution of other types of contraception in rural areas.
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