A year on, 52-year-old fights adverse drug reaction after wrong medication

A year ago, Khopoli resident Nazneen Taj, 52, was in for a shock after the doctor administered her medicines to cure fever. Within two days, Nazneen's skin started peeling off in layers. She had suffered from an adverse drug reaction (ADR) to an anti-bacterial drug, Meropenem, in a hospital based out of Oman.

"I was visiting my husband in Oman when I fell ill. After the doctor injected the drugs, I began developing rashes on the back and the face. The rashes manifested into my skin shedding perennially," said Nazneen. "When I used to sleep on a mattress or sit on a sofa, I would later discover that scales of skin have left behind."

Nazneen suffered from exfoliated dermatitis, which is an adverse reaction caused by the drug when it attacks the layers of skin. Doctors in Oman were baffled by Nazneen's condition. "They could not identify my condition. My health was in a precarious state. I was hanging between life and death while being flown back to India," she said.

It has been a year since the reaction and Nazneen says that she has yet not fully recovered. Her skin is darker than ever before, and doctors said that she could not regain her fair complexion ever again. "The vision in my eyes has reduced and I have lost a lot of weight," said Nazneen.

I did not anticipate the perils, I would have to endure after my discharge from the hospital that I was being treated in at Pune. "My nails wore off entirely after my discharge. My eyebrows and eyelashes shed. Hair from my head came of entirely. I now sport a short hair cut," she said.

Nazneen who is a teacher by profession was researching about ADRs and realised that not many cases from India are reported online. "The mechanisms to report ADRs in India are extremely poor. I had never anticipated that one injection would change my life forever. I was on the verge of dying and had lost hope that I would ever recover," Nazneen said.