In May 2025, the hospital routine of several Argentine provinces altered with a disturbing fact: patients in intensive therapy who received fentanyl began to develop fulminant pneumonia. The first focus was on the Italian hospital in La Plata, where doctors accustomed to living with the urgency ran into a pattern that did not fit. The studies confirmed the unthinkable: some fentanyl ampoules were contaminated with resistant bacteria. The finding opened a file that is already considered the largest sanitary tragedy caused by an adulterated medication in the country. The first figures exceed one hundred deaths under suspicion and there is still no final number of victims.
The man in the center of the storm, now detained, is Ariel García Furfaro. At 23 he was convicted of homicide attempt. At 40 he reappeared on stage turned into a pharmaceutical entrepreneur with weight political contacts. In 2017, HLB Pharma bought, a laboratory that grew in the heat of state contracts. Its history with the ANMAT was a manual of irregularities: propofol items withdrawn by suspicions of falsification, dopamine without traceability, diclofenac and contaminated morphine. The health body had sanctioned it more than once, but never closed the doors at all. In parallel, Furfaro fed links with officials and leaders who shielded him in front of each back. The press was baptized “The Lord of Fentanil.”
The outbreak officially began on May 2, but medical records show that some complications were already detected days before. In less than two weeks, the cases multiplied in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Córdoba and at least eight other provinces. On May 13, the ANMAT ordered the closure of HLB Pharma and its associated plant Ramallo laboratories. Federal judge Ernesto Kreplak ordered raids and embargoes, while Malbrán analyzed the suspicious lot, 31202. The result was overwhelming: six of ten ampoules had lethal bacteria.
Tragedy
Contaminated doses circulated throughout the country. Malbrán estimated that more than 33 thousand ampoules were distributed before being withdrawn. Rosario, Bahía Blanca and the City of Buenos Aires became drama epicenters. Doctors in saturated guards described the impotence of facing intractable infections. One of the bacteria, the Klebsiella, had NDM-5 antimicrobial resistance, which made its treatment virtually impossible. “It was seeing how a serious picture became a terminal in a matter of hours,” he trusted an intensivist to judicial experts.
The expertise agreed at one point: the origin was in the sterility failure of the production plant. Malbrán confirmed with molecular techniques that the genetic footprint of bacteria in ampoules coincided with that of patients. The forensic medical body analyzed twenty medical records and concluded that adulterated fentanyl was a determining factor in several deaths, although not always the only cause. That technical precision gave Judge Kreplak a more complex margin: each case should be reviewed individually to define homicide imputations.
Judicial investigation added ingredients that reinforce the suspicion of cover -up. Stolen documents, suspicious fires in storage plants, medications hidden in sheds linked to cereal transport companies. Everything indicates that, when the news exploded, there was a deliberate operation to erase traces. In parallel, the ANMAT revealed that since February 2025 the laboratory was under the magnifying glass. In April it had already been prohibited from distributing propofol and in May the same was arranged with the fentanil. However, contaminated ampoules were already in hospitals.
The case is already known as the fentanilogate. A tragedy that combines negligence, corruption and death. The judges review files, relatives claim justice and hospitals still drag the shadow of a medication that, instead of relieving, multiplied agony. Each new fact that appears in the file reinforces an uncomfortable question: how a recycled convict in a pharmaceutical entrepreneur managed to get so far without anyone stopping him? That is the line that nobody is still encouraged to close.
Image gallery
