Chlorfenapyr alert in Egypt: an urgent call for action to save lives!

Abstract The tragic incident in Minya, Upper Egypt, where a father and his six children passed over 12 days of homicidal poisoning with the chlorfenapyr pesticide, has urged me to write this letter to the Egyptian Journal of Forensic Sciences . Brain magnetic resonance imaging of the father was suggestive of toxic leukoencephalopathy, showing an extensive white matter hyperintensity and edema. The victims, subjected to postmortem examination, had chlorfenapyr and tralopyril detected in their biological samples. The cause of death was attributed to acute poisoning with chlorfenapyr. This is an urgent call for mitigating the escalating fatal threat of chlorfenapyr poisoning in Egypt. Initiating comprehensive governmental preventive measures on accessing such highly toxic pesticide and equipping the poison control centers with advanced analytical measures for detecting chlorfenapyr and its metabolites is a critical need rather than a luxury.