By Ramatoulie Jawo
The “66+campaign”, a group advocating justice for the 70 children whose deaths have been linked to the Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) has called for justice for the children.
Speaking at the Victim Centre earlier Monday, Ebrima Sanyang, whose child died of AKI and chairperson of the “66+campaign” encouraged his colleagues to speak-out their plight to let the world to know about it.
“The (Victims) centre is here to help the victims. Then we the victims should help ourselves by speaking up so that the world can know what has happened and to know what we are feeling, because if we don’t speak people will not know what exactly went wrong,” he said.
Sanyang alleged that the multiple deaths have been caused by “negligence in our health sector”.
“Even if we lost one life, that should be a lost for the whole country, talk less of more than 66 children. And it was all because of the negligence in our health sector,” he alleged.
Ebrima urged other parents affected to take a bold step and fight for the truth.
“I know we have lost our children already; but let us not sit back and say we are not going to do anything. If we do that then we will never have justice for these innocent children and it can happen,” he said.
Sanyang encouraged Gambian artistes to use their voices and join the fight to achieve justice for their children who lost their lives to AKI.
Madi Jobateh, human rights activist and a member of the campaign said they would request to meet with the National Assembly select committee on health for them to be heard by the committee, as the Ministry of Health and other agencies were.
“As victims, we demand to sit with the health committee because they have met with the Ministry of Health and other agencies, but the public is yet to know what they discussed and it’s important for the MPs to hear from the victims themselves,” he said.
The duo made the call at a general meeting by the “66+campaign” at the Victims Centre in Kotu on Monday.
The Acute Kidney Injury is linked to 4 brands of imported Indian made syrups manufactured by Maiden Pharmaceutical Limited.