September 14, (THEWILL) – Gambia has ordered importers and shops to suspend sales of all brands of paracetamol syrup, while the government investigates a suspected link between the medicine and the deaths of dozens of young children.
Last Thursday, Gambia’s health service said it had launched the probe, after a spike in cases of acute kidney injury among children under the age of five was detected in late July.
The children suffered symptoms including an inability to pass urine, fever and vomiting that quickly led to kidney failure.
Gambia’s medicines regulator, Medicines Control Agency (MCA), said there was insufficient data to warrant a general ban on paracetamol syrups, a painkiller often used to treat fevers in children.
While the regulator did not name any specific brands, it, however, said some samples had been sent abroad for quality-control testing.
Last week, World Health Organisation officials said the evidence pointed not to paracetamol, but to an infectious origin such as polluted water, but emphasised there were many unanswered questions.
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