The World Health Organization\u2019s investigation into contaminated cough syrups, which have been linked to nearly 300 worldwide deaths as yet, has flagged 20 such toxic medicines manufactured from two countries namely India and Indonesia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told The Indian Express that these 20 toxic medicines were manufactured by \u201c15 different manufacturers\u201d in the aforesaid two countries. All the 20 medicines are syrups namely cough medicine, paracetamol or vitamins. They further include 15 previously identified contaminated syrups. These 15 contaminated syrup were manufactured in India by Haryana-based Maiden Pharmaceuticals, Noida based Marion Biotech, and Punjab based QP Pharmachem. The remaining five toxic medicines were manufactured in Indonesia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier, the WHO had already raised \u201cmedical product alerts\u201d on the 15 medicines in Gambia and Uzbekistan, where the India-made syrups were linked to nearly 88 deaths in the past year, along with Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. WHO also raised an alert in Indonesia, where syrups sold domestically were connected to the death of over 200 children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the first week of June, the Nigerian drug controller raised an alert after it discovered a paracetamol syrup sold in Liberia contaminated with diethylene glycol or ethylene glycol. The syrup was reportedly manufactured by a Mumbai-based company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The WHO spokesperson affirmed that the organization is aware of media reporting of the potentially contaminated syrups in more countries but its list of medical product alerts has not been expanded. Medical product alerts are raised to ascertain that more people do not consume the contaminated medicine and that the products are removed from the supply chain. Lindmeirer clarified that WHO raises such alerts only when there is sufficient evidence to support that the product is contaminated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the incidents of Indian syrups were being flagged by other countries, the Government has put in place a mechanism for all cough syrups meant for export to be tested before they are exported. A statement issued by the government in May, stated that only those cough syrups that receive a \u2018certificate of analysis\u2019 from the country\u2019s four central drug testing laboratories, two regional testing laboratories, or any of the NABL-accredited state testing laboratories, will be permitted for export.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first incident of toxic medicine came to light in October, 2022 when the WHO raised its first medical product alert for contaminated syrups manufactured by the Maiden Pharmaceuticals. The cough syrup was connected to the deaths of 70 children in Gambia. Uzbekistan too reported the deaths of nearly 18 children owing to acute kidney injury connected to two syrups manufactured by Noida-based Marion Biotech. In a similar incident in Indonesia, the death of nearly 200 children due to acute kidney injury were related to eight contaminated syrup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 15 contaminated syrup were manufactured in India by Haryana-based Maiden Pharmaceuticals, Noida based Marion Biotech, and Punjab based QP Pharmachem. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":477163,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,1511],"tags":[42,35506,159146,917,59836],"yst_prominent_words":[76475,76472,57861],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/06\/20130531\/images-2-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477161"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=477161"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=477161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}