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Milk powders kill babies in Anhui Province
By Di Fang (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-04-20 08:47
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao vowed thorough investigation and severe punishment
to the producers of fake milk powders that killed dozens of babies in East
China's Anhui Province. An investigation team was sent to the area by the State
Food and Drug Administration Monday.
A victim of the
fake and poor-quality milk powder.[file] | At
least eight babies in Fuyang, Anhui Province, have died last year by severe
deficiency disease caused by fake milk powders.
More than 100 other infants in the Fuyang area, mostly between three and five
months old, still suffer from malnutrition after drinking various cheap milk
powders produced in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Northeast
China's Heilongjiang Province and Beijing.
Although banned in Fuyang, such inferior milk powders are still sold in some
rural areas of the city, China Central Television (CCTV) reported.
Born healthy, the baby victims became thinner and thinner, but with large
heads compared to their bodies.
"My girl, the first child of mine, died when she was only four months old
after drinking the 'Haobaobei' milk powder," Zhang Linwei, a 32-year-old
villager of the Wangzhuang Village in Fuyang was quoted by CCTV as saying.
Zhang realized that his daughter got ill after the girl refused to drink the
milk powder any more half a month before.
"Before that, I thought my daughter's face was becoming fatter and fatter
because she was fed well and grew fast,"the baby's father said.
Law enforcers from
the Fuyang Administration of Industry and Commerce confiscate 2,540 bags
of fake and inferior-quality milk powders on April 19, 2004.
[newsphoto] | When the girl was sent to hospital,
physicians had a difficult time finding blood vessels due to a large
concentration of water under the skin.
The girl died nine days later and all of the family's savings were spent for
medical fees.
"It is like a nightmare. I never imagined that my baby would pass away like
this," he said.
Zhang said he tried to contact the producer of the milk powder according to
the address on the packing bag but never succeeded.
According to statistics provided by the Fuyang Centre for Disease Prevention
and Control, 97 per cent of the unqualified milk powders the sick children ate
fail to reach the national standard of protein content for infant milk powder -
at least 10 per cent.
"The fake milk powders only have 5-6 per cent protein and the lowest is has
only 1 per cent," Qi Yong, an official with the centre said.
"For babies, drinking such fake milk powder is no different from drinking
water," Zhang Fangjun, a medical expert with the Fuyang Renmin Hospital said.
"Such so-called milk powder cannot provide any nutrition for babies' growth,"
Zhang said.
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