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Suspect held as killer drug claims 4 victims
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POLICE have detained a Jiangsu Province chemical company employee after four people died and at least six others suffered serious kidney failure from injections containing a substandard ingredient.
Wang Guiping allegedly sold the substance, propylene glycol, to Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, a Heilongjiang Province drugmaker now at the center of a medicine scandal.
On Saturday night, police sealed up the Qiqihar factory after the State Food and Drug Administration banned all its products. Jiangsu authorities have sealed up the chemical at Wang's factory in Taixing.
Jiangsu's drug agency posted on its Website a warning for nationwide drugmakers to stop using propylene glycol bought from Wang's company.
The four deaths occurred in southern China's Guangdong Province, where at least six others were listed last night in serious condition, suffering breathing difficulties and paralysis.
Jiangsu official were "well in control" of the substandard chemical, according to Cao Yongwen, director of Qiqihar's Food and Drug Administration.
The Qiqihar drugmaker mainly produces Armillarisin A, used to treat gall bladder, liver and gastric disorders; metamizole sodium, a pain and fever reliever; and calcium gluconate injections for bone growth and other uses.
The company has recalled 600 ampoules of the problem Armillarisin A it had sold in Xi'an, capital of northwestern China's Shaanxi Province, Cao said.
Inspectors have found serious quality problems at the drugmaker, Cao said, without elaborating, and police have started an investigation at the company.
A Guangdong Province-based newspaper said yesterday the firm had also made fake medications besides Armillarisin A.
The firm, based in a Qiqihar suburb, has more than 300 employees.
The state-owned company was restructured into a private business last year.
The scandal was discovered in April when patients in Guangdong Province developed kidney failure.
Between April 22 and 24, two liver patients at a provincial hospital reported kidney failure.
Then "many more" patients reported similar injuries, authorities said.
Guangdong's liver experts blamed the kidney failures on a bad reaction to the Armillarisin A injections made by Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical.
On May 3, Guangdong's FDA and Health Department sealed up all the firm's Armillarisin A injections at the hospital and banned the product from sale.
On the same day, the Guangdong authorities reported the matter to the state drug adverse reaction center.
On May 11, the province began banning all medications from the Qiqihar firm.
Heilongjiang authorities have confiscated nearly 1.2 million ampoules of the Qiqihar drugmaker's injections.
Shanghai hospitals and drug stores said they don't sell the troubled products.
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