18 students,five others fall ill after taking malaria medicine

The affected children were first taken to a doctor in the area. Chandrasinh Tatod,the sarpanch of the village,said,“The moment the incidents of vomiting and nausea increased we called for the emergency services and rushed them to the SSG hospital.” Nagji Parmar,a resident of the village,said,“My six-year-old daughter came back home and started vomiting and we took her first to the doctor in the neighbourhood.”

As the number of cases increased,a team of medical officers was sent to the village. District Malaria Officer Rakesh Sharma said,“Almost all the children are stable. One of the patients is found to be dehydrated. We are trying to find out the quantity of the dose given to them.”

All the children were admitted at the Paediatric ward in SSGH. Dr Bakulesh Javdekar,head of the department,said: “The patients will be kept under observation today and we are trying to know the quantity of doses and the medicine they were given.”

However,the Chief District Health Officer of Vadodara said there was no fault on the part of the medical team. “There was no problem in the medicines and the doses. Chloroquine does have after effects of gastritis. This is a panic created by the villagers,” said Bhagwat Itare,CDHO.

Probable cause
According to Talati of the village,ZA Sindhi,the school children were asked to take the tablets immediately as children sometimes throw away the medicine. “The blood samples of some children showed symptoms of malaria and therefore all the children were given the tablets so that they don’t contract the disease. However,the dose was in excess which caused the problem.” He said: “Usually students are asked to take the tablets after going home. But there have been cases wherein children were reported to have thrown away the medicine.” Sindhi said some children might have taken medicine with empty stomach leading to the reaction.

Earlier incident
The reaction caused by excessive dose given to school children is not new in the region. A similar incident had taken place last year in Vohra village. The sarpanch of the Hajirpura village,Chandrasinh Tatod,said,“A similar incident took place last year in Vohra village about 2 km from Hajipura village. Three school children,who were given tablets by a team of doctors complained of nausea and vomiting. A similar case was reported at Dhanyavi village two days ago. However,it was not severe.”