Hundreds of worried parents in Hong Kong streamed into government clinics with their children this week after news broke that the China-imported milk they had been feeding their youngsters may have been contaminated.
At a government clinic in Tsuen Wan in the New Territories on Wednesday, Ng Siu-yin was upset to learn she would have to return with her daughter the next day because the clinic only has the capacity to examine 50 children a day.
”How can they have a quota for only 50 children? Do they know how many children are affected in Hong Kong?” Ng said.
Thousands of children in mainland China are in hospital with kidney stones, ill from infant milk formula contaminated with melamine, a cheap, toxic plastic-making industrial chemical.
Nitrogen-rich melamine was apparently added to watered-down milk to cheat in quality checks, which often use nitrogen levels to measure the amount of protein in milk.
Some of the China milk brands are sold in Hong Kong at lower prices than other foreign brands, and many parents here have been feeding their children Chinese milk for years.
Two children in Hong Kong have already been diagnosed with kidney stones since Saturday and government clinics have been jammed this week with alarmed parents, grandparents and children.
Zheng Guohong, mother of six-year-old Ling Jun, is worried her son’s kidneys may have been affected by the tainted milk.
”His urinating pattern has changed in the past two years, he needs to go to the toilet very often but each time, there is very little urine. He even wets his pants and I have to change him a few times a day,” she said.
”I brought him to a doctor last year, but he said it was just an infection. I hope there’s nothing wrong with his kidneys.”
In Hong Kong, children are first given a urine test. Suspect cases are then given ultrasound and blood tests.
Small children most vulnerable
Experts say there are three basic tests for these children: an ultrasound, and tests on their urine and blood.
”I would advise them to have an ultrasound, to make sure there are no kidney stones. Do a urine examination because when there is renal damange, there are traces of blood or protein,” said nephrology specialist Daniel Chan at Queen Mary Hospital.
”And do a blood test to make sure that the child’s kidney function is perfect. These are the minimum.”
Experts say very small children who had been relying solely or mostly on the problematic milk would be most vulnerable.
While kidney stones can be removed easily, another more worrying consequence is that kidney damage and even failure can result when melamine starts crystallising in and blocking small kidney tubes that filter blood.
While people are alerted to kidney stones because of the pain they cause, crystals are dangerously silent.
”It can occur without the patient knowing,” Chan said.
Chan said parents should be alert to other signs of trouble in the kidneys such as loss of appetite in their children. There could also be a reduction in urine output, although that was not an always reliable sign, he warned. – Reuters