800 people in the UK could become victims of the third-generation contraceptives. Experts do not yet know whether these deaths are directly caused by drug intake, or the link is indirect.
When a servicewoman Trudi Banning collapsed unconscious on the floor of the military warehouse, it surprised everyone who knew her. Nobody could understand what could knock out a healthy 22 -year-old girl. Doctors from the nearest hospital found out that Trudi’s digestive system was damaged by a terrible disease – gangrene. We know that this disease affects human limbs, which then have to be amputated, but it turns gangrene can develop inside the body.
It turned out that the cause of the digestive tract gangrene were two blood clots completely blocking blood supply to the area. Oxygen-deprived tissue just rotted and died. Subsequent investigation revealed that the girl could have suffered from an oral contraceptive Femoden that she had been regularly taking, according to her relatives, for 4 consecutive years.
Fortunately, after a few months of an artificial coma doctors managed to bring Trudi back to life. Now she is 40 and happily married, but she can not have children, suffers from memory loss and has to take anticoagulants to reduce blood clotting. Back in 2002, Trudy and 122 other victims of Femoden sued the three manufacturers of the drug. The trial was lost, as there was no clear evidence of the contraceptive’s harm, but last month, the case was reconsidered in Europe. There was an assumption that the third-generation oral contraceptives are much more dangerous than it is generally assumed.
The risk of developing blood clots during chronic intake of these drugs was 1.2 cases per 1,000 people. Since the release of the pills on the market in early 1980s, 78 residents of the UK died, but experts believe that the real number of victims exceeds 800 people, as only 10% of such deaths were officially attributed to the consequences of drug use. Today Trudi is gathering all the relatives of the dead and paralyzed women affected by pills for a campaign against Femoden producers and other similar contraceptives.
