After 20 years, María Salaya, a resident of Viedma and victim of the “Yectafer” case, was finally able to testify in the criminal trial related to this adulterated medicine. It was a medicine that is used as an iron supplement, but it had been adulterated and caused the death of five people, including Verónica Díaz from Viedma. In addition, she left 33 others with serious injuries throughout the country, according to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.
Salaya described before the Federal Oral Court No. 3 of the city of Buenos Aires how he received an injection that changed his life at the Primary Health Care Center (CAPS) in the Santa Clara neighborhood. This case, which has been the subject of investigation for years, led to the indictment of several people for illicit association, distribution or storage for the purposes of marketing of goods dangerous to health, falsification of medicinal substances and use of a false or adulterated document or certificate, as authors.
The adulterated batch of the drug Yectafer-Hierro 5% was marketed between 2003 and 2004. Five people died and another 33 were left with serious damage to their health. The defendants, including Adrian Jorge Quintela, Diego Hernan Manzotti, Pablo Jorge Cernadas, Albert Mario Akawie, Daniel Leonard Rabinovich, Robert Henry Gegenschatz, Victor Julian Scattolini, Sandra Lilian Vitale, Miguel Cervera and Santiago Lucio Gavazza, They are identified as part of an organization dedicated to the illegal manufacture and distribution of adulterated Yectafer.
The prosecution accused them of having adulterated lot No. 03100718, expiring in October 2006, in which specifically, Its harmful properties were disguised through falsification and imitation of the original product. whose authorized production corresponds to the Astrazeneca laboratory.
The parents of Verónica Díaz, a fatal victim of Yectafer. Photo: Marcelo Ochoa Archive.
María Salaya: «The physical and emotional scars still persist»
María Salaya, a resident of the Santa Clara neighborhood, was on the verge of death on the fateful December 16, 2004. It all started when he went to the Primary Health Care Center (CAPS) seeking treatment for his anemia. Without imagining it, he would receive a Yectafer injection that would change his life forever.
«The oral and public trial began on November 27, 2023 for those involved in the Yectafer case. Prior to this, in August 2023, we were in contact with the prosecutors, who explained to us how the trial would develop. We started on November 27 and I had to testify on February 27,” Salaya told RÍO NEGRO Diary.
Salaya reported that in December 2004, after suffering the loss of a pregnancy and developing anemia, she was prescribed Yectafer injections as treatment; She went to look for them at the Zatti hospital. However, After receiving one of these injections he began to show a series of symptoms, “including vomiting, intense dizziness and a feeling of poisoning in the body. “My legs were numb and the vomiting didn’t stop.”
The adulterated iron killed five people, including Verónica Díaz from Rio Negro.
«They treated me with serum and sent me home on Thursday, but the symptoms did not subside. On Sunday, social workers at the hospital urged me to return, since another girl, Verónica Díaz had fallen with the same symptoms and had been transferred to Buenos Aires by medical plane for a transplant,” he recalled with anguish.
When she was taken to the hospital, she was diagnosed with toxic hepatitis. Mary had iron levels three times higher than normal. Salaya revealed that «was not the only one affected, since several cases with similar symptoms had been reported, which led to the intervention of the Ministry of Health to investigate the contaminated Yectafer batch.
«I spent several days in the guard, where they did many studies on me, until they referred me to Buenos Aires for a liver transplant, But miraculously my body recovered on its own and the transplant was not necessary,” María said.
«I weighed only 48 kilos, and the road to recovery was long and difficult. He had five small children to take care of, in addition to the emotional trauma of not knowing what awaited me, especially after Verónica’s tragedy. “I lost my job and had to start over from scratch.”
“To this day, I don’t know what that blister really contained, and the physical and emotional scars persist, the only thing I asked the court is for justice to be done,” María added.
Yectafer Cause: the Viedmense, Verónica Díaz, was the first fatal victim
On December 23, 2004, Verónica Díaz died at the Eva Perón hospital in Buenos Aires, where she had been urgently transferred from the Zatti hospital, with a ruined liver, after receiving injections to treat iron deficiency anemia.
The last application caused fulminant hepatitis that led to her death in a couple of days. The result of the first studies on the applied ampoule – which was immediately reported by the doctors at the Zatti hospital as the cause of the young woman’s seriousness – indicated that it was an iron overdose.