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Govt blames kidney failures on big pharma
The Health Ministry said it has “75 percent confidence” that the poor production quality of a solvent widely used in medicinal syrups was the cause of a string of acute kidney injury (AKI) cases that has resulted in nearly a hundred child deaths.
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An employee collects medicinal syrups that contain paracetamol at a minimarket in South Tangerang, Banten, on Oct. 19. (Antara/Sulthony Hasanuddin )
T
he Health Ministry on Friday said that it had “75 percent confidence” that the poor production quality of a solvent widely used in medicinal syrups was the cause of a string of acute kidney injury (AKI) cases that has resulted in nearly a hundred child deaths.
It is the latest hypothesis to come out of an investigation by an expert team formed by the ministry, which detected compounds that might have caused AKI in sick children and in the medicines they consumed before falling ill.
Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin explained that the early results of current examinations had alluded to the deaths being caused “not by pathogens” like bacterial or viral infections, but by dangerous chemical properties having entered the bodies of sick children.
The chemical compounds – ethylene glycol (EG), diethylene glycol (DEG) and ethylene glycol butyl ether (EGBE) – were not among the ingredients of medicinal cough syrups, but rather impurities carried by poorly produced polyethylene glycols.
“Polyethylene glycol is not a dangerous chemical in and of itself. However, if it is not well produced, and the resulting quality is poor, then it will produce impurities like EG and DEG. The body will then metabolize [these impurities] into oxalic acid,” the minister said in a press conference.
Once oxalic acid enters the body, Budi explained, it turns into calcium oxalate crystals that are dangerous and “could destroy young children’s kidneys”.
They are one of the most common forms of kidney stones.
