ET Deep Dive: The Water in the Vial
7/5/202619 min
Five young mothers in Kota died within twelve days after a routine oxytocin shot. The vials meant to stop bleeding after childbirth had no drug in them at all, just water. What followed was an investigation that tore open a Punjab manufacturer's records: fabricated test data, tampered machines, missing safety checks, and a company that had been ordered to stop production three years ago and simply ignored it. Reported by Teena Thacker narrated by Anirban Chowdhury this epiosde traces the deaths, the daily-wage families left behind, and how a tiny, poorly regulated oxytocin market let a repeat offender keep supplying hospitals until it turned fatal.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAnirban Chaudhuri· Host0:00
[intro jingle] Hello, and welcome to ET Deep Dive, ET's best reported stories in audio. Today's episode is based on Tina Thakur's report on how a batch of fake oxytocin injections, vials that were supposed to contain a life-saving drug but held nothing but water, led to the deaths of five young mothers in Kota, Rajasthan within a span of just 12 days. It's Sunday the 5th of July. I'm Anirban Chowdhury. This is the Morning Brief. [intro music] "We were waiting for our first child to arrive," says Ravi Naik, a 25-year-old mason in Kota, Rajasthan, his voice trailing off in anguish. When his wife Jyoti Verma developed labor pains on May 4th, he rushed her to the New Medical College Hospital. The next day, the 20-year-old underwent a cesarean section and delivered a healthy baby boy. Mother and child were fine. Naik sighed with relief.