By: Abdoulie John
Tensions flared in the High Court in Banjul on Wednesday as lawyers representing families of babies who died from Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) locked horns with a senior health official over the official findings linking their deaths to contaminated Indian-made cough syrups.
Mustapha Bittaye, Chief Medical Director of the Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital, faced intense cross-examination by Lawyer Anna Njie during the resumption of the landmark case. The proceedings quickly descended into a sharp semantic dispute centered on the interpretation of the Task Force report on the 2022 AKI outbreak.
Lawyer Njie pressed Dr. Bittaye on the report’s clear conclusion that the deaths of the babies “can be attributed with high certainty” to four contaminated syrups manufactured by India’s Maiden Pharmaceuticals. However, the medical director maintained a more cautious stance, insisting the language meant only that “there is a high chance” the syrups were responsible.
The exchange grew heated when Njie confronted Bittaye with positions taken by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Both international bodies had concluded that the contaminated medications provoked the fatal AKI cases. Dr. Bittaye firmly responded: “That is not correct.”
At one point, Njie directly challenged him: “Are you denying the report of the Ministry of Health?” After being compelled to read a specific passage aloud, Bittaye replied, “I don’t see that they are saying that it was caused by this or that.”
The case involves lawsuits filed by up to 18 families against the Gambian government, the Ministry of Health, Maiden Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Atlantic Pharmaceuticals, and the Medicines Control Agency (MCA). More than 70 children died in 2022 after consuming the tainted cough syrups, triggering a presidential directive for a nationwide door-to-door campaign to remove the implicated products from homes.
Both the WHO and the CDC had described the situation as a “severe outbreak of acute kidney injury among children,” noting fatality rates exceeding 80 percent linked to the contaminated imported pediatric medications from the Indian manufacturer.
The tragic episode shocked the nation and drew global attention to the quality control failures in medicine in The Gambia.
Justice Jaiteh presiding over the matter adjourned proceedings to Thursday, May 14, 2026, for the continuation of Dr. Bittaye’s cross-examination.
The case continues to attract significant public interest as it seeks accountability for one of the country’s worst public health tragedies in recent memory. Families hope the court will deliver justice and shed further light on how the contaminated syrups entered the Gambian market.
