Up to thirty six children were reportedly died excruciating deaths on Tuesday, September 16, 2014 after receiving tainted measles vaccines as part of a United Nations (UN) program in the rebel-controlled Northern part of Syria.
According to Telegraph UK, the program was halted following reports that saboteurs were tampering with an international effort to ensure that the prolonged civil war in Syria doesn’t result in a measles outbreak.
Doctors in Jirjinaz and Maaret al-Nouman, both in the northeastern province of Idlib said children began taking ill not long after the vaccine was administered.
Daher Zidan, the coordinator of the medical charity, Uossm said: “It’s very bad. The figures of dead we are getting go into the 30s. Children are dying very quickly. We think it will get worse.”
Experts suspect that a contaminated batch of the vaccine is responsible for the incident.
“At least five children have died and fifty others are suffering from poisoning or allergic reactions after measles vaccinations in Jirjanaz, in Idlib province,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Opposition sympathizers started posting pictures of the dying children online with people suggesting that the vaccine had been adulterated with cyanide, possibly by government agents.
A Syrian doctor working in Turkey, Mohammed Mowas said the symptoms were a gradual slowdown of the heart rate as the infants turned blue showing consistent symptoms of cyanide poisoning. “This looks like deliberate attempt to spike the vaccines,” he said.
