An Argentine judge formally accused two former officials from agencies in charge of controlling medications for their alleged participation in the case of contaminated clinical fentanyl that circulated in public and private hospitals across the country. The accused are Nélida Bisio, who led the National Administration of Drugs, Food and Medical Technology (Anmat) during the crisis, and another unidentified official in the available excerpt.
The contaminated fentanyl was linked to at least 90 deaths and 44 injured patients in the country. The health tragedy is considered by the Argentine press as the most important in the last 100 years, surpassed only by the covid-19 pandemic.
The case came to light in May of the previous year, when a hospital in La Plata, 50 kilometers south of Buenos Aires, detected the same bacteria in fentanyl ampoules and in infected patients. The contamination of the ampoules caused severe reactions in patients who received the medication.
