MINSA and CSS Knew About the 1,155 DEG Victims
(Panama-Guide) By Grisel Bethancourt for La Critica - Since 2008 the Ministry of Health was aware of the list of 1,115 people who were prescribed medicines from the Office of Social Security tainted with the highly toxic diethylene glycol, and these authorities should have followed up on who might have been affected by the poisoning. This knowledge is reflected in a letter sent by the then Health Minister Rosario Turner to the Special Superior Prosecutor Dimas Guevara on 5 May 2008, in Note No. 475. "There is an obligation on our part to make known and available to health authorities the information that we have processed the names of the people who used these drugs contaminated with the toxic diethylene glycol, in order to determine the health status of every one of them," said the letter sent by Turner, to which La Critica had access.
