A pharmaceutical company that made a drug which killed 11 people
in Guangdong Province has been fined 19 million
yuan (US$2.3 million) by a drug watchdog.
The production licence of the Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical
Company, based in northeast China, has also been revoked by the Heilongjiang provincial food and drug
administration and the sale of the firm's drugs banned.
The State Food and Drug Administration has ordered all products
which have already been sold to be traced and destroyed.
The provincial government has ordered a thorough investigation
into the incident while the central government has launched a
nationwide review of pharmaceutical plants.
The latest victim of the drug, a 54-year-old man, died last
weekend after taking the medicine several weeks ago. His death
brought the death toll in one of China's worst tainted medicine
scandals to 11.
No other death cases have been reported in other regions besides
Guangdong.
The man, surnamed Chen, died of heart failure in hospital in
Guangzhou, capital city of Guangdong Province.
Chen had been hospitalized at the end of April with serious
hepatitis, said Gao Zhiliang, director of the infection department
at No. 3 Zhongshan Hospital, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
After being given an injection using a drug from the Qiqihar No.
2 Pharmaceutical Company, he showed symptoms of massive organ
dysfunction and fell into a coma.
Three other patients in the same hospital were still ill after
being given the drug, but their conditions are no longer life
threatening, doctors said.
The drug contained diglycol, which causes pain in the alimentary
canal and stomach and damages the kidneys, nervous system and
liver.
One ton of diglycol was sold to the Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical
Company's factory last November as propylene glycol, an auxiliary
material for injections. The company's quality inspectors failed to
discover the problem.
Using diglycol, the company produced the injection, mainly for
treating cholecystitis, or inflammation of the gall bladder wall,
and gastritis.
Jiangsu Province's Wang Guiping who was arrested on May 12 has
admitted selling the diglycol. He told the authorities that profit
was his motive because diglycol is much cheaper than propylene
glycol. The status of his case was unclear.
(China Daily July 1, 2006)