More than a dozen Indian women who died after undergoing sterilisation procedures may have been given antibiotic laced with rat poison, officials say. The medicines were handed out at a mass sterilisation held a week ago in impoverished Chhattisgarh state. At least 13 women who attended the camp have died. Preliminary tests of the antibiotic tablets given to the women found they contained zinc phosphide, said Siddhartha Pardeshi, the chief administrator for the Bilaspur district. Zinc phosphide is commonly used in rat poison.
Alok Shukla, principal secretary in the health department of Chhattisgarh state, warned the public not to buy the ciprofloxacin tablets manufactured at a local factory and banned from sale following the deaths last week.
‘Since the specific medicine is available for private (sale and use), people need to be informed about its substances to avoid any further casualty,’ Mr Shukla told AFP.
‘We found zinc phosphide in one of the medicines given to the patients during the sterilisation operation,’ he said.
‘We also received reports that about nine persons, who were not part of the sterilisation operations and had taken the same medicine, manufactured locally, have taken ill with the same symptoms.’
The deaths have triggered widespread criticism of a government-run programme that offers poor Indian women cash incentives for sterilisation in what activists say are often horrible conditions. A doctor who performed the operations on 83 women in just a few hours blamed the drugs for the deaths after his arrest.
He said he was being made a scapegoat for the controversial family planning scheme. The victims suffered vomiting and a dramatic fall in blood pressure on Monday last week after undergoing laparoscopic sterilisation, a process in which the fallopian tubes are tied. Dozens of women were still in hospitals recovering, with several on dialysis or on ventilators, Mr Shukla said.