There's another problem, the Indian drug ethylene glycol, which once caused dozens of child deaths. Surendran | Testing | Drugs
According to Bloomberg News website on July 28th, a test commissioned by Bloomberg News revealed that an Indian made cold medicine sold in Iraq contains toxic chemicals, the latest in a series of worrying disclosures involving syrup based drugs used by children around the world.
The American independent laboratory Walisul, which conducted the testing, said that a bottle of "Cold Stop" purchased from a pharmacy in Baghdad in March this year contained 2.1% ethylene glycol. This is approximately 21 times the generally acceptable upper limit. Low doses of ethylene glycol can cause death, and this ingredient was also blamed for the deaths of dozens of children in the Gambia and Uzbekistan caused by cough syrup produced in India last year.
Bloomberg reported the test results to the World Health Organization and officials from Iraq and India on July 8th. The World Health Organization has told Bloomberg that it considers the reliability of the test results to be "acceptable" and will issue a warning if the Iraqi government confirms that the product is being sold in Iraq. So far, no public warning or recall has been announced.
This is the fifth time in a year that a test has found that drugs exported from India contain excessive amounts of ethylene glycol. In addition to the large-scale poisoning incidents in the Gambia and Uzbekistan, government laboratory testing has also found other contaminated drugs in the Marshall Islands and Liberia, but no case reports related to these drugs have been received.
The label of "Cold Stop" shows that this drug is produced by Fultz Company, a manufacturer headquartered in Chennai, India, exporting drugs to more than 50 countries and regions including the UK, Germany, and Canada. The vice president of the company, Bara Surendran, said that the production of "Cold Stop" was subcontracted to another Indian company, Sharon Pharmaceuticals.
Surendran said that after receiving an inquiry from Bloomberg, Fultz tested the existing "cold stop" samples and found that the samples were not contaminated. The manager of Sharon Pharmaceuticals did not respond to the request for comments.
The large-scale poisoning incident in the Gambia last year resulted in the death of more than 60 children, and approximately 20 children died in Uzbekistan. The above events have raised new questions about the quality of drugs exported from India. India is the world's largest producer of generic drugs and calls itself the "world pharmacy".