Expired drug kills 18 child leukemia patients in Yemen

Local Yemeni media reported the death of 18 children on separate days after they were provided with expired medicine at the end of last September in the “Cancer Treatment Unit” at Kuwait Hospital, while the rest of the children were transferred to intensive care departments in Sana’a hospitals.

“Al-Masdar Online” website quoted informed sources as saying, “The rest of the children who were covered by the “Methotrexate” treatment, which was produced by an Indian company, are still in the intensive care of a number of Sana’a hospitals, after being injected with the dose and the appearance of medical complications.”

A medical source said to the website mentioned, that “a dose of medicine was given inside Kuwait Hospital on Saturday September 24th and Sunday September 25th, and on the next day the children began to show symptoms of severe headache, convulsion and coma.”

According to the source, “there is no official agent for the medicine, and these doses were purchased from one of the nearby pharmacies, for it was not available.”

Days after the tragedy, the Supreme Authority for Medicines and Medical Appliances issued a circular preventing the use of this medicine.