China ingredient supplier gets life for killer drug

A Chinese court has jailed a man for life for supplying a drug maker a fake ingredient that led to at least 14 deaths, local media said on Wednesday.

More than 10 patients at the Zhongshan University No. 3 Hospital in the southern city of Guangzhou died in 2006 after receiving an injection, Armillarisni A, made by the Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical Co Ltd in northeast China.

Investigators discovered that the drug contained a cheap and toxic industrial syrup, diglycol, which was passed off by Wang Guiping as the ingredient propanediol and sold to the pharmaceutical firm.

It was one of a spate of cases that have erupted in the last few years, prompting a crackdown on fake or sub-standard food and medicines after public alarm at home and abroad.

The Taizhou Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern province of Jiangsu convicted Wang late last month of charges including “endangering public safety” and “selling fake products”, the China News Service said.

Wang, who had operated with forged business licenses, was also fined 400,000 yuan ($57,670). More than 290,000 yuan of “ill-gotten money” was confiscated, it said, quoting a local newspaper.

The 14th victim died in January 2008. He was among 11 patients affected by the fake drug who had sued the Guangzhou hospital for 20 million yuan.

Fourteen executives of the Qiqihar company were detained at the time and its license revoked. It was also fined millions of dollars.

Diglycol made in Jiangsu, which attacks patients’ kidneys, livers and nervous systems, was also believed to be responsible for hundreds of deaths in Panama in 2006 after being mislabelled as innocuous glycerin and made into cold medicine.

Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, was executed in July 2007 for taking bribes and dereliction of duty after a series of drug safety scandals under his watch.

His successor Shao Mingli this week flew to the southern province of Jiangxi to investigate the deaths of six patients who received injections from a batch of immunoglobulin at a hospital in Nanchang, the provincial capital.

Authorities have suspended use of human immunoglobulin made by the Jiangxi Yabo Bio-pharmaceutical Co. ($1=6.936 Yuan)

BEIJING (Reuters)