Taskent, a torrent of corruption behind deadly children's syrup

At the trial for the Dok-1 Maks scandal it is emerging that Indian manufacturers regularly bribed health workers across the country to recommend the preparation to patients. In the meantime, President Mirziyoyev has replaced the Minister of Health but without indicating what new measures will be taken.

Tashkent (AsiaNews) - The Tashkent court has resumed sessions of the trial on the Dok-1 Maks syrup scandal, the use of which has led to 18 children becoming permanently disabled, while in total there are now around seventy people who have suffered serious consequences .

Other names have been added to the list of accused people, which are currently 23. The accusation highlights how after taking the drug 16 children received very serious traumas, and three died directly after taking the syrup.

Last August it became clear that the number of people affected by taking the drug from the Indian company Marion Biotech is much higher than previously thought. If at the beginning of 2023 there was talk of around twenty children involved, today those confirmed are at least 65, as reported in court by the former head doctor of the multifunctional center in the Samarkand region, Dr. Mamaktul Azizov.

The president of the court, Musa Yusipov, has included 17 people in the list of accused, and in the coming days all their positions will be examined. According to the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan, as published in the documents of last December 1st, part of the documentation was sent to the investigative bodies "to review the accusatory conclusions and deepen the additional procedural actions, relating to the involvement of other people in the state of accusation."

So far the accused are 21 people, including the former director of the Pharmaceutical Development Agency and director of the company Quramax Medikal, an Indian citizen, together with several others connected to him, in total 16 men and 5 women against whom charges were filed by the National Security Service of the SGB.

The company has had its licenses for trading in pharmaceutical products revoked. The prosecutor's office stated that the distributors of Dok-1 Maks had paid bribes to local officials, amounting to 33 thousand dollars, to waive the mandatory checks of the preparation to be placed on the market, which was thus registered as accessible on the domestic market of Uzbekistan .

It was also made clear that the Indian entrepreneurs who produced the deadly syrup regularly bribed healthcare workers across the country to recommend the preparation to patients. A representative of the tax committee who testified at the trial explained that the manufacturers paid a total of 5 billion som (about half a million dollars) to doctors who recommended the syrup, and who helped purchase it.

The nurses received 122 million som (about 10 thousand dollars), while the pharmacists received 2 billion and 345 million som (almost 200 thousand dollars). Over a million dollars was then distributed to various other collaborators for the dissemination of the drug.

Last year, according to information released by Radio Ozodlik, the authorities in the northern Indian state of Uttar-Pradesh authorized Marion Biotech to renew production, but after the mass deaths of children in Uzbekistan the cough syrup was been blocked.

Meanwhile, the President of Uzbekistan Šavkat Mirziyoyev replaced the Minister of Health, appointing Asilbek Khudajarov as a temporary replacement: in a meeting "in a critical spirit" in the presence of Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov, Minister Amrillo Inojatov was fired, without further clarifications on the ministry's future programs.