Spurious drugs: Dera Bassi firm exported 18K cough syrup bottles
Chandigarh, April 26
Dera Bassi-based QP Pharmachem Ltd has exported 18,000 bottles of cough syrup to Cambodia from where it might have been circulated to other countries, said Punjab’s Food and Drug Administration.
The World Health Organisation on Tuesday issued a medical alert for contaminated cough syrup being manufactured by a Punjab pharmaceutical unit.
The cough syrup was found contaminated with the presence of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol. It can cause nausea, diarrhoea, abdominal pain or even death in adverse cases. But the state FDA said no such adverse reaction has been reported by the WHO so far.
Punjab’s State Drug Controller Sanjeev Garg said after getting a communication from the WHO, a joint team of the Central Drugs Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO), Baddi, and the Punjab FDA carried out an inspection on the premises of the manufacturer on April 18. He said some renovation work was going on in the unit so that no new manufacturing was being done.
Medicine was not available but every manufacturer has to preserve a controlled sample of the medicine till six months after the expiry of the drug. So the controlled sample was collected and has been sent to a CDSCO laboratory for testing, but the report is still awaited. Following that the Punjab FDA has issued a show-cause notice to the firm.
No harm so far: FDA
- The cough syrup was found contaminated with the presence of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol
- But the state FDA said no such adverse reaction case had been reported by the WHO so far
