Gambia Cough Syrup Deaths: Haryana Drug Controller Faces Allegations Of Taking Bribe To Switch Test Samples

Last year, cough syrups that parents of 70 children in the African country of Gambia trusted to cure their kids, ended up taking their lives instead. After the tragedy, the World Health Organisation found that the syrup was contaminated and issued an alert against Maiden Pharma, while Indian labs contradicted WHO months later.

Now a lawyer in Haryana has accused the state's drug controller of taking bribes to switch cough syrup samples just when they were to be tested in Indian laboratories.

What does this change?

Authorities are also reportedly investigating the serious allegations, which raise questions against the reports, based on which India's CDL had called out WHO for prematurely blaming Maiden Pharma.

Since then Gambia's parliamentary panel has stood by WHO, and the company's founder Naresh Kumar Goel has been convicted in an older case of exporting substandard cough syrups to Vietnam.

The lawyer making these allegations claims that he learnt about it from individuals in the pharma industry, while WHO isn't aware of any such probe.

Months after the incident in Gambia, cough syrups from another Indian firm Marion Biotech, were linked to deaths of 18 children in Uzbekistan.

After the Indian laboratory report on Maiden's syrup, the Drug Controller General of India had also blamed WHO for the impact of its alert on the image of the country's pharma sector.