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Antifreeze Laced Teething Medicine Kills At Least 34 Children
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by Terri Potratz | December 19, 2008 at 08:45 am
343 views | 14 Recommendations | 3 comments
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Bonjela soothing tooth gel (or also known as : teething gel)
uploaded by Carolblondon
At least 34 children in Nigeria are dead after consuming a teething medicine laced with an antifreeze ingredient.
More than 5,000 batches of My Pikin Teething Mixture have been seized by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, which claims most of the poisonous drugs have come from India and China.
The agency said it also arrested a sales representative of Barewa Pharmaceuticals Ltd. of Lagos, Nigeria, the drug's manufacturer, after shutting down the drugmaker.
The agency also shut down Tranxell Ltd., which the agency said supplied chemicals to Barewa.
Barewa and Tranxell officials could not immediately be reached for comment, CNN reported.
The Nigerian regulatory agency said tests showed 90 percent of the teething mixture contained the chemical diethylene glycol, a sweet-tasting poisonous substance normally used in engine coolant. It can be also found in some hydraulic fluids and brake fluids.
The poison triggered kidney failure in the children, ranging in age from 4 months to 3 years, the agency said.
Health officials said the number of deaths could be higher than 34 because many parents in Africa's most populous country have no access to basic healthcare.
England has sent about 100 doses of antidote.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 10:33 on December 19th, 2008
This has to stop rather sooner then latter. We do have a this sort of news weekly now with every thing from Cookies to Milk and toys...
We need to change the Global markets and profit system that causes this.
at 11:39 on December 19th, 2008
This happened before and killed thousands of children in India and the Philippines.
If it were me, I would stop ALL products coming from China. Period.
at 18:38 on December 19th, 2008
Last year, cough medicine laced with ethylene glycol killed over a hundred people in S. America. The ethylene glycol was substituted for glycerol. China source.