Contaminated cough syrup made in India found in West Pacific

                  According to the latest report by World Health Organisation, contaminated cough syrup made in India was found in the Marshall Islands and Micronesia.  Even though , any case of illness for children who consumed the syrup, has not been reported, it is the third time that India's pharmaceutical companies are being warned for importing dangerous medicines. The Guaifenesin syrup had been found to be spiked with an " unacceptable level" of two contaminants that are not safe for human consumption. The samples were tested by quality control laboratories of the Therapeutic Goods Administration of Australia. It was found by TGA that the product contained unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol as contaminants. These which are toxic to humans when consumed can prove fatal. it's toxic effects cause abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, headache, altered mental state and acute kidney injury which may lead to death. This syrup's manufacturer is QP Pharmacem Ltd, Punjab and its marketer is Trillium Pharma, Haryana. According to QP Pharmacem's managing director, the sample from the exported batch was tested and they couldn't find any contaminated issues. The company also said that they couldn't find any issue or complaints in India with the same medicine.

                This is the 3rd time WHO alert on issues caused by Indian cough syrups. Earlier the Indian manufactured cough syrup that was exported to THE Gambia, even caused children's death in October 2022. It brought in the attention of the whole world. The WHO citing the incident linked to Indian made cough syrups, made the governments and regulations to improve inspections, market surveillance and more on with other measures to combat the manufacture and distribution of substandard medicines with the purpose of detecting and removing any substandard medical products that had been identified by the WHO as the potential causes of deaths and disease. In Gambia, the cough syrup was contaminated with Diethylene Glycol and Ethylene Glycol and led to acute kidney injury cluster among   children. The cough syrup manufactured by Maiden Pharmaceuticals of India led to the death of 66 Gambian children. As per the joint probe report by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) of the US and the Gambian health authorities, there was a strong link between the death of the children and the consumption of Indian manufactured cough syrup. It was the first in which the Diethylene Glycol contaminated medication were imported into a country rather than being domestically manufactured. Also these low-resource countries do not have the human and financial resources to monitor and test the imported drugs. The WHO issued an alert that the four cough syrups manufactured by the Maiden pharmaceuticals Ltd were of substandard quality.

               Meanwhile three employees of another pharmaceutical company in India, Marion Biotech, whose cough syrup was linked to the deaths of 18 children in Uzbekistan were arrested in 2022. On testing, it was found that the medicines were not of standard quality ( adulterated and spurious). All these led to the less reliability and trust on Indian manufactured medicines. The alert by WHO to stop using these medicines has affected the pharmaceutical companies and the import of medicines. The WHO has urged the manufacturers of liquid dosage form to test for the presence of contaminants such as Ethylene Glycol and Diethylene Glycol before use in medicines.