The deaths of nearly 100 children in Indonesia have prompted the country to suspend sales of all syrup and liquid medication.
Indonesia has found contaminated medicines that are suspected of being linked to the deaths of 99 children this year due to acute kidney injury, officials said yesterday.
Indonesia’s Food and Drug Monitoring Agency said it was tracing 26 medicinal syrups used to treat fevers, coughs and colds, noting that testing showed five such medicines had ethylene glycol levels “that exceeded the safe threshold,” it said in a statement.
It comes following a global alert issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) over four cough syrups that were linked to the deaths of almost 70 children in The Gambia - a small west African country.
According to WHO, the four products are Promethazine Oral Solution, Kofexmalin Baby Cough Syrup, Makoff Baby Cough Syrup and Magrip N Cold Syrup.
"The stated manufacturer of these products is Maiden Pharmaceuticals Limited (Haryana, India). To date, the stated manufacturer has not provided guarantees to WHO on the safety and quality of these products," WHO said.
"Laboratory analysis of samples of each of the four products confirms that they contain unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol as contaminants. To date, these four products have been identified in The Gambia, but may have been distributed, through informal markets, to other countries or regions."
Indonesia's Health Ministry, which banned all syrup medicines yesterday, is working with the food and drug agency to determine which other drugs to potentially withdraw as a preventive measure, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said.
There have been 206 cases of acute kidney injury in children reported from 20 provinces in Indonesia this year, and a death rate of 48%, the Health Ministry said.
Diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol are toxic to humans when consumed and can prove fatal.
Toxic effects can include abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, inability to pass urine, headache, altered mental state, and acute kidney injury which may lead to death, WHO said.
Additional reporting by the Associated Press.
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