Madrid/A five-year-old died on Tuesday in the Carlos Juan Finlay Polyclinic, from Songo-La Maya (Santiago de Cuba), for the intake of a drug that caused the poisoning also of another child in the same house. The minors had consumed 500 mg paracetamol at home, the General Directorate of Health of the Provincewhich has stressed that the medicine was of foreign manufacture and was expired since 2020.
According to the information provided in social networks by health, the child arrived with seizures to the polyclinic on Tuesday morning and, although he was assisted and examined, nothing could be done to avoid his death. The conversation with family members revealed that another minor, in this case 11 years, presented a similar picture, which is why he was transferred to the center.
“Due to the obvious deterioration of your health status and confirmation of the consumption of the medication indicated, the diagnostic-therapeutic protocols were applied to compensate and transfer it later to the Juan de la Cruz Martínez Maceira Children’s Hospital, of the provincial head, in whose intensive care unit is currently recovered, stable and under observation,” adds the publication.
The authorities argue that an investigation will be carried out to clarify the causes of death. The amount ingested by minors is unknown to reach intoxication, although the expiration date was already very distant and could also be behind the reasons for death. Most likely, however, the medication was adulterated, according to sanitary sources consulted by 14ymedio.
“The main problem of paracetamol is that it is hepatotoxic, which affects the liver, but that is with a lot of treatment time or people who have liver problems. In addition, it would be necessary to see if the medicine is really paracetamol. It could be a falsification,” says a pharmacist.
“Expiration cannot produce death,” says a doctor consulted by this newspaper that co -indeys that, in high doses, paracetamol consumption can cause death
“Expiration cannot produce death,” says a doctor consulted by this newspaper that co -unique that, in high doses, paracetamol consumption can cause death. “Children must take according to their weight, 60 mg per day per kilo, distributed in 4 or 6 shots,” he adds.
The authorities have asked to “strengthen security measures in the management of pharmaceutical products at home” and point out that the event must attract attention “about the importance of strengthening health education in communities, and promoting safe access to medicines in adequate conditions.” However, the reality is that the State has been incapacitated to provide drugs to families regularly.
Dozens of people have commented on the health publication sharing the reproach to the department for this reason. “Educatedly, I know that I should not take anything, so I go to a pharmacy and there is nothing. It is time to get in the street and you will know where they get most of the medications that are being marketed today in Cuba, if they are reliable or not. One lives back crazy with everything, every time I crash with someone selling national production medications I Children, ”says a woman who affirms that health education can be lacking” but what is left over is misery and decline in all the services provided to the Cuban people, even in the most basic. ”
Other users have expressed their fear that this fact will serve to combat the drugs of the black market whose risks prefer to assume consumers in the face of certainty of having nothing. “Sad event due to the precarious situation that the people live, without medication in state pharmacies, having to go to individuals who do solve the problem. I hope this fact is not the excuse for the prohibition of these sales without the State guaranteeing them, because then the dead will be even more.”
According to the Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, during the session of the Parliament last July, Cuba has “an availability of only 30% of the basic medication picture, which in pharmacies reaches only 32%.” The active substance of Paracetamol has been one of the products that the authorities have reported several times as missing, although many other times the impossibility of manufacturing the blister is behind the shortage.
