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.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘ANCIENT AND MODERN’: The project, which took 22 years to complete, unearthed more than 300,000 treasures now on display across the network It caused untold commotion, decades of disruption and — among historians and archeologists — controversy and despair, but at midday on Saturday, the antiquities-rich subterranean world of Thessaloniki opened to a world of driverless trains and high-tech automation with the inauguration of its long-awaited subway. The excitement on the streets of the northern Greek port city is almost palpable. “Archaeologically, it has been an extremely complex and difficult endeavor,” said Greek Minister of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs Lina Mendoni of the more than 300,000 finds made since construction began 22 years ago. “To get here required a battle on many
‘AMERICA FIRST’: Patel, 44, previously called for stripping the FBI of its intelligence-gathering role and purging its ranks of anyone who refuses to support Trump’s agenda US president-elect Donald Trump has tapped Kash Patel to be FBI director, nominating a loyalist to lead the chief US law enforcement agency — which Trump has long derided as corrupt. Patel rose to prominence expressing outrage over the agency’s investigation into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. With the nomination of Patel, Trump is signaling that he is preparing to carry out his threat to oust FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Republican first appointed by Trump during his first term as president, whose 10-year term at the FBI does not expire until 2027. FBI
RSS