Report on fatal medicine in children wins ABSW Investigative Journalism Award

‘The drug was meant to save children’s lives. Instead, they’re dying’ 

The eye-catching stand first says it all. Children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia are being put at risk due to substandard versions of medication which should be lifesaving. 

For this story, Rosa Furneaux chased down the production and use of asparaginase all over the world. Her investigative work, alongside colleagues at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) - Laura Margottini, Paul Eccles, and Chrissie Giles – scooped the 2024 Steve Connor Award for Investigative Science Journalism. 

The judges described the article from TBIJ as a ‘catalyst for change’. The editor, Chrissie Giles, said the Steve Connor Award means a lot to them, as “it means the issue is getting attention, and people are reading about it” - something they definitely deserve after all their hard work.  

Having originally been tipped off about a substandard version in Brazil, Rosa soon uncovered a global failure in the market for asparaginase. “It was just a few hospitals in Brazil to begin with,” said Rosa, but as the article indicates, the team of journalists quickly realised the extent of the medical disaster. 

Rosa admitted she had wanted to “give up” on at least one occasion but through perseverance and passion for the cause, the team “found leads in Italy, and it paid off”. 

The article itself also included some positive results from the research being done into the market failure, highlighting new ways of testing patient blood against asparaginase, and three companies in India working towards improving the quality of medication distributed. And since the article’s publication, countries such as Italy have looked into their distribution of asparaginase.

Know more about this investigation here.

The 2024 ABSW Awards were announced on July 3, at The Royal Institution in London. Other finalists for the Steve Connor Award included Kit Chapman’s work on the superconductor scandal of recent years, and Catherine Offord’s uncovering of Cheeky Scientist’s exploitative marketing tactics. 

Read also "ABSW Awards honour the trailblazing work of Debora Mackenzie" and "Jonathan O’Callaghan is British Science Journalist of the Year for 2024," by Anoushka Sinha.