A muscle relaxant appears to have been mixed mistakenly with measles vaccine, killing 15 children in Syria this week, the WHO said on Friday, calling it the biggest such tragedy in living memory.
The WHO said it could not completely rule out sabotage, so the measles inoculation campaign remained suspended until the investigation was finished.
Fifteen children died after being vaccinated against measles in northern Syria, aid workers said on Wednesday, a tragedy likely to damage trust in health services in opposition-held areas.
The manufacturer, who has not been identified, shipped the vaccine in powder form with a diluent to a hub in Syria where it was stored and then sent to Deir al-Zor and Idlib provinces for the campaign to vaccinate tens of thousands of children that began on Monday, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said.
“In the hub apparently, [from] what we know so far, the diluent was kept … together in the same refrigerator with a muscle relaxant. The relaxant is called Atracurium. This got mixed in some cases instead of the diluent with the vaccine powder,” Lindmeier told a news briefing in Geneva.
Pointing to human error, he said: “So the ones who packed it obviously put the wrong ampules with the vaccine powder into the package. Then it gets shipped in the vaccine carriers to the facility, there it gets unpacked, mixed and then it has to be used within six hours.”
“So both at the packing and at the unpacking there had to be gross negligence,” Lindmeier said.
The muscle relaxant, usually administered as an anesthetic for surgery, works according to weight, so all the children who died were under the age of two, he said. Older children survived after vomiting, diarrhea and anaphylactic shock.
“It seems very clear that it was not the manufacturer’s fault, not that the vaccine is contaminated, but it’s a fault on the ground, again not established whether it’s human error or deliberate, but the fault lies on the ground as per indications,” Lindmeier said.
It was not clear who was in charge of the refrigerator and investigations continue, he said.
The WHO and UNICEF supported the campaign, but were not directly involved due to insecurity and the “politically charged” situation in the area, he added.
“There is still a slight possibility that it’s not only human error, but an intent, that has to be cleared up definitely before anything can continue,” he said.
More than 50,000 children in the two provinces received the vaccine before the campaign was suspended, he added.
Prior to Syria’s civil war, about 99 percent of children were vaccinated against measles, a highly contagious disease that can cause serious complications such as meningitis and pneumonia, becoming much deadlier in difficult conditions.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS