RAIPUR: A senior Indian health official warned Sunday against buying an antibiotic feared laced with a toxin found in rat poison and linked to the deaths of 13 women who underwent sterilization operations.

Alok Shukla, principal secretary in the health department of Chhattisgarh state, urged the media to raise awareness about the ciprofloxacin tablets manufactured at a local factory and banned from sale following the deaths last week.

“Since the specific medicine is available for private (sale and use), people need to be informed about its substances to avoid any further casualty,” Shukla. Said.

“We found zinc phosphide in one of the medicines given to the patients during the sterilization operation,” he said.

“We also received reports that about nine persons, who were not part of the sterilization operations and had taken the same medicine, manufactured locally, have taken ill with the same symptoms.”

Zinc phosphide is commonly used in rat poison. Officials suspect the tainted drugs were handed out to the impoverished women who underwent the operation at a mass sterilization camp this month in the central state. The company at the center of a probe has denied that the antibiotic tablets it manufactured were contaminated with a chemical compound commonly found in rat poison. Preliminary tests of ciprocin tablets made by Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, a small firm based in Chhattisgarh state, were found to contain zinc phosphide, two senior officials in the state said on Saturday. Samples have been sent to Kolkata and Delhi to verify that they were contaminated.