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Tests show that Torrijos administration understated poisoned medicine death toll
Panama News Briefs

Tests show that government understated DEG death toll

by Eric Jackson, from other media

According to the investigation the Ministry of Health (MINSA) and Social Security Fund (CSS) by themselves, these institutions only poisoned 51 people to death and Health Minister Camilo Alleyne and Seguro Social director René Luciani are not at fault and should keep their jobs.

But prosecutors say that they have received around 300 credible complaints of other poisonings, most from the families of people who died, and the investigations of these other cases got underway recently with the exhumations of 11 bodies of people who don't appear on the Torrijos administration's list of people who were poisoned by the government and whose survivors are eligible for compensation.

Aided by an Argentine toxicologist, residues of the toxic diethylene glycol (DEG) that was mixed into sugarless cough syrup and benedryl elixir --- apparently by accidental use of mislabeled raw materials --- were identified in the tissues of two of the first four bodies examined. Make the death toll 53 and counting, and just because DEG couldn't be positively identified in the other two deaths doesn't definitively rule that out as a cause of death. With time and varying conditions, it becomes harder to identify the poison's traces.

The big problems facing the Public Ministry in this case now are financial and political. They don't have the budget or the personnel to promptly test all of the bodies of those whom families say were poisoned by the government, and it seems that President Torrijos, who is standing by major PRD fundraiser Alleyne and long-time party apparatchik Luciani, is not about to come up with the funds to conduct a proper investigation.

Another factor that will get in the way of a full accounting of the DEG scandal is the unavailability of some of the remains for testing. In a number of cases bodies were cremated, and in others the families don't want to authorize exhumations.

Meanwhile the investigations, which are going in several directions and include files opened against both Alleyne and Luciani, continue at a pace that has many impatient and Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez pleading for the families' and the public's patience. The complaint against the health minister and CSS director came from lawyers for families of those who were affected rather than from the Public Ministry, as Panama allows for the private filing and prosecution of criminal charges in cases where public prosecutors decline to act. However, in this case Gómez has accepted that there is at least enough reason to suspect that the complaints may be valid to have her subordinates open investigations. She has insisted, however, that so far there is not enough evidence to seek court orders removing Alleyne or Luciani from their posts, let alone to have them jailed pending trial.

The most recent arrests in the case have been of MINSA pharmacies director Pablo Solís and his predecessor Ralph Anderson. They're charged with negligence that was part of the cause of the deaths.

The criminal investigation is also probing into other apparent violations of laws connected to the production, testing and procurement of medicines and raw materials used for the production of medicines that may not have had any direct part in the deaths. For a number of years there had been complaints of bad conditions at the CSS medicine production lab where the DEG-laced cough syrup and benedryl were mixed, neglected testing and certification procedures and disobedience of directives about purchases and procedures affecting the public health care system's medicine supplies. One of the Alleyne's and Luciani's pleas is that they inherited a bad system from their predecessors and it seems that Gómez is looking into that without so far accepting it as a defense.

Assembly approves new press gag laws on second reading
Church weighs in against weakening domestic violence laws

Panama City Carnival woes