Drug victim's kin take to lawsuit

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-20 08:58

The family of a victim of the ciwujia herbal injections that killed three and seriously injured four last October in Yunnan province filed a lawsuit demanding 1.1 million yuan ($162,552) in compensation, Yunnan Daily reported Thursday.

Li Zheng, 54, from Hunan province, was the first victim of the injectable herbal product, processed by Wandashan Pharmaceutical Co in Heilongjiang province from a Siberian ginseng.

The drug was used to treat thrombosis and heart disease.

Li's wife and five children filed a suit at Kaiyuan municipal intermediate people's court on Feb 22 against Zhang Guohong, one of the company's sales staff, No 4 People's Hospital of Honghe prefecture of Yunnan, the pharmaceutical company as well as Zhongxing Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd in Zhanjiang of Guangdong province.

On October 4 last year, Li, who complained of a headache caused by high blood pressure, went to No 4 People's Hospital where the doctors pushed Ciwujia on him.

He began to show adverse reactions the next day and died at night due to multiple internal organs failure.

Li's family said judicial enquiry revealed that the bacteria-polluted Ciwujia injection caused the death.

"We want justice!" said Li Ya, Li's youngest daughter, the paper said.

Half a year has passed since the accident, and although there is a strong case against the offenders as the evidences suggest, "the victims are yet to get an apology or a compensation", Li complained.

Families of the other four victims are also preparing lawsuits.

Ten lawyers from the Yunnan-based Tianwaitian Law Firm have joined forces to provide legal services to the victims, according to the firm's dean Luo Ke.

Early investigation by the State Food and Drug Administration found that the harmful injections were part of a batch that was contaminated when the company's warehouse in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, was flooded in July.

But the firm's salespeople simply replaced the labels and put them on the shelves.

Salesperson Zhang Guohong was later arrested for further investigation and has since been detained till his trial.

The firm has been stripped of its GMP (good manufacturing practices) certificate. The owners were banned from producing or selling drugs for the next 10 years.

No new cases were reported after a national recall of the poisonous medicine.