A Dhaka court has recently awarded three officials of Adflame Pharmaceuticals 10 years of rigorous imprisonment, the maximum punishment stipulated in the related law, for manufacturing adulterated paracetamol syrup which killed 76 children in the 1990s. Judge Abdur Rashid of the Dhaka Drug Court also fined the three convicts Tk2 lakh each in the case, which was filed 22 years ago. The three convicts are Adflame Director Helena Pasha, Manager Mizanur Rahman and Production Officer Nigendra Nath Bala.
According to the fact of the case, the child mortality rate suddenly shot up at Dhaka Shishu Hospital between 1990 and 1992, and all of them died from kidney failure. On suspicion, the then director of the hospital Brig (retd) Mokbul Hossain verbally notified the drug administration about the matter on July 3, 1991. Several news media published news reports that many children were dying after taking adulterated paracetamol. On November 25, 1992, Abul Khayer collected samples of “Flammodol” and sent it to the drug testing laboratory and the WHO for examination. It was then found to have contained diethylene glycol.
Dhaka Shishu Hospital’s kidney specialist Prof Mohammed Hanif came to experience the tragedy of hundreds of children dying from kidney failure in 1982, when he started his career as a resident doctor at the BSMMU (formerly PG Hospital). Every day, patients coming in for treatment of failures of both kidneys and fevers, were dying despite being treated with dialysis. The doctors could not do anything to help them recover.
He saw the same situation happening at Shishu Hospital after he had been transferred there in 1986. The children were dying from renal failure. The physicians checked the hospital’s water sources as well as the houses of the victims and conducted several other tests but did not find anything that could explain the mystery.
Later the hospital authorities formed a committee with Prof Hanif as the chair. In 1990, they came to know that something was wrong with the paracetamol which was being administered to the children. The children who were going to the hospital for minor surgeries started to experience renal failure, even though they did not have such complications earlier.
After reading a Newsweek article that talked about the adulteration of paracetamol in Nigeria, Prof Hanif was sure that paracetamol adulteration was behind the renal problems. To convince the state authorities to do something, the probe body sent a sample of Adflame’s Flammodol to the government’s drug laboratory, but the laboratory did not respond.
Later they requested the Directorate General of Drug Administration to take a sample and send it to the drug laboratory. The laboratory again kept mum. The committee then sent a sample to Japan and to Fisons – a British multinational pharmaceuticals company, but those efforts did not work out either. Finally, they sent the sample to a government laboratory in Massachusetts, US and got a result. Following this, the committee arranged a press conference to make the fact public.
The convicts were given this sentence under the Drug Control Ordinance of 1982. According to Section 16 (c) of the Drug control Ordinance of 1982, whoever manufactures, imports, distributes, stocks, exhibits or sells any drug which is adulterated misbranded, spurious or imitated, shall be punishable with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to 10 years, or with fine which may extend to Tk2 lakh, or with both, and any implements used in the manufacture or sale of such medicine or drug may, by order of the Drug Court, be forfeited to the government.
In the judgement, Judge Abdur Rashid mentioned that by manufacturing and marketing adulterated paracetamol consuming which many children had died, the convicts committed a crime against humanity. They deserved death penalty but since the law does not provide for death penalty we have to satisfy with the highest possible punishment.
There are reasons to be cynical too. This judgement which satisfied many families who have lost their children, has come from a subordinate court and appeal from the judgement will still lie with the High Court Division of the Supreme Court. There is a reasonable apprehension that the convicts will be able to obtain a stay order against this judgement from the HCD at the time of submitting their appeal petition. We all hope the Highest Court will decide upon the case keeping in mind the gravity of the crime that the convicts have once committed.