DHAKA: Bangladeshi authorities have ordered 15 brands of milk powder be tested for the hazardous chemical that has killed four babies in China and sickened thousands more, an official said yesterday.
Director General of the Bangladesh Standard and Testing Institute, Azmal Hossain, told AFP samples of Chinese and New Zealand milk powder brands had been gathered from markets throughout the country.
“We collected the milk yesterday and will do so again today. It will then be tested by the department of chemistry at Dhaka University and we will know the results within seven or eight days,” he said. New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra is a joint venture partner of Chinese milk manufacturer Sanlu Group, which has been affected by the product safety scandal in China.
Two other Chinese companies found to have produced tainted milk powder, Guangdong-based Yashili Group and Qingdao-based Suncare Co. Ltd., export products to Bangladesh.
Officials from Bangladesh’s food and commerce ministries were due to hold a meeting on Sunday to discuss the matter, he added.
Meanwhile, doctors, paramedics and health workers were braced yesterday across Bangladesh to face a raging epidemic of water-borne disease that causes rapid dehydration of the body and can be fatal, Health Ministry officials said.
Authorities of the international Cholera Hospital in the capital Dhaka opened new wards and set up tents in the parking lot of the hospital to cope with the increasing rush of patients struck by diarrhea, cholera and other intestinal diseases.
An average of nearly 400 infected people in conditions of serious dehydration were reporting daily, a record high for this time of year. “The number of people coming to the hospital for treatment has crossed records of the past,” said Dr. Shahadat Hossain who looks after the ward that houses the long-staying diarrhea and cholera patients.
Hospital files show about 60 percent of the infected persons seeking hospitalization currently are children from squatter families living in low-lying shanties on the outskirts of Dhaka with little or no access to safe water.
The Health Ministry has called for a nationwide survey of the diarrhea and cholera situation in the country, said Moazzam Hossain of the disease control center of the ministry. The ministry has also ordered hundreds of thousands of saline packets and thousands of saline bags for the treatment of acute dehydration and restoration of the electrolyte balance among patients.
