Uzbekistan Court sentences 21 over poisoned Indian cough syrup deaths
– Indian Medicine company Marion Biotech, manufactured the poisoned cough syrups.
-At least 86 children were poisoned in Uzbekistan between 2022 and 2023, out of which 68 children died .
-India canceled the production license of the company responsible for production .
– India’s drug regulator has found the cough syrup & another anti-allergy syrup are toxic and are cause of 141 children’s deaths worldwide
Uzbekistan on Monday handed out sentences to 21 people linked to the deaths of 68 children who consumed a contaminated cough syrup produced in India by an Indian Medicine company “Marion Biotech“. At least 86 children were poisoned in the Central Asian country between 2022 and 2023, of whom 68 died.
Indian citizen Singh Raghvendra Pratap, the director of an Indian Medicine company “Marion Biotech” that imported the Doc-1 Max syrup into Uzbekistan, was given the harshest sentence of 20 years. He was found guilty of corruption, tax fraud and forgery, according to the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan.
Samples of the syrup revealed it was contaminated with either diethylene glycol or ethylene glycol, which are toxic substances used as industrial solvents that can be fatal if ingested even in small amounts, the World Health Organization said in January 2023.
India subsequently canceled the production license for Indian Medicine company “Marion Biotech“, which manufactured the cough syrups.
During the same period, at least 70 children died in Gambia from acute kidney failure after consuming another syrup imported from India.
In Indonesia, another syrup in similar containers caused the deaths of more than 200 children between 2022 and 2023.
India’s drug regulator has found that a cough syrup and an anti-allergy syrup made by Norris Medicines are toxic, according to a government report, months after Indian-made cough syrups were linked to 141 children’s deaths worldwide. The medicines were contaminated either with diethylene glycol (DEG) or ethylene glycol (EG), the same contaminants found in the cough syrups that caused the deaths in Gambia, Uzbekistan and Cameroon since the middle of last year.
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