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 Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, run from an upscale residential street in
the eastern city of Raipur, is now at the center of a probe into
more than a dozen deaths in eastern India after 83 women were
sterilized at a government-run family planning camp.
More victims arrived at hospitals from villages in Bilaspur
district, about 100 km (60 miles) from Raipur, on Thursday and
Friday, some clutching medicine strips from Mahawar and complaining
of vomiting, dizziness and swelling, a doctor at the district's main
public hospital said.
At least one of the strips of antibiotics, seen by Reuters, was from
the same batch as those handed out at the mass sterilization held on
Saturday in the same district in Chhattisgarh state, one of India's
poorest.
The factory owners deny there was anything wrong with their
medicines.
Police say they entered the Mahawar factory on Wednesday with the
help of a security guard, but at first found nothing wrong. Drug
inspectors returned the next day and shut it down, but not before
two men were seen lighting a pre-dawn fire out back.
A construction worker across the street said the 4 a.m. fire struck
her as unusual. In the past garbage fires had been lit in the
evening, she said.
A Reuters reporter found a pile of ash surrounded by spilt white
powder behind a wall at the single story blue and white building. In
the cinders were medicine packets, including for Mahawar Pharma's
Ciprocin 500 mg pills.
A batch of this product has been banned by Chhattisgarh's state
government following the deaths but appears to still be available in
rural areas.
Speaking in police custody, Ramesh Mahawar, the managing director of
Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, told Reuters he and his son were innocent.
He said the deaths and illness had only happened in Bilaspur, while
his medicines have been sold elsewhere.
"The situation has been twisted in a wrong manner. We are just being
harassed," said Mahawar, who has been making drugs for 35 years and
said his company had an annual turnover of around $130,000.
Authorities raided a dilapidated bungalow in Bilaspur on Thursday
that they said was used by another company to distribute medicines
including Mahawar's Ciprocin. The compound was littered with medical
waste including broken bottles and tablet packs, some half burnt, a
Reuters witness said.
NEW PATIENTS
The new patients arriving in Bilaspur hospitals over the last two
days did not take part in the sterilization camps and had consumed
the drugs separately, the doctor and another official said.
"It looks like most of the sterilization patients might be affected
due to this medicine," said the doctor, saying the strips showed the
medicine was made in Raipur.
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One died overnight, bringing the number of deaths to 14 and drawing
investigators attention away from the appalling sanitary conditions
at the camp where Dr. R. K. Gupta had conducted one tubectomy every
2 minutes in a two-hour sterilization drive.
Since then, women operated on by other doctors at different camps
have also been hospitalized after consuming the same drugs. More
than 100 remain in hospital, several in a critical condition.
One of five doctors who have conducted autopsies since Saturday's
deaths said the post-mortems were inconclusive and recommended
chemical analysis to establish the cause.
Another medicine on the state government's banned list was Ciprocin
made by Regain Laboratories, halfway across the country in the state
of Haryana. In Gujarat, another state, medicine quality control
authorities have put Regain at the top of an offenders list for
failing to meet standards.
Regain Laboratories director Mohit Bhatia did not answer repeated
calls to his cell phone on Friday.
The deaths in Chhattisgarh have drawn unflattering attention to
India's mass sterilization program, as well as weak quality control
standards for drugs procured by state governments.
"States procure medicine through a tender and the manufacturers that
bid the lowest quote win the order to supply, regardless of their
manufacturing process or distribution systems," said Bejon Kumar
Misra, head of Partnership for Safe Medicines India, a
non-governmental organization.
India is the world's top sterilizer of women, and efforts to rein in
population growth have been described as the most draconian after
China. Indian birth rates fell in recent decades, but population
growth is among the world's fastest.
Sterilization is popular because it is cheap and effective, and
sidesteps cultural resistance and problems with distribution of
other types of contraception in rural areas.
(Additional reporting by Tanya Ashreena, Krista Mahr and Andrew
MacAskill in NEW DELHI and Jatindra Dash in BHUBANESWAR; Writing by
Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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