WHO: contaminated cough syrup made in India found in Western Pacific

Contaminated cough syrup made by an Indian company has been found in the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, the World Health Organization said, after a spate of child deaths linked to other syrups in some countries last year.

The WHO statement did not say whether any children in the Marshall Islands or Micronesia had fallen sick.

But it said samples from a batch of imported cough syrup, with the product name Guaifenesin syrup TG syrup, were contaminated with unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol, which are toxic to humans when consumed and can prove fatal. The contamination was identified by Australia’s regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

The new alert follows three similar warnings issued last year by the WHO about contaminated cough syrups for children. These syrups, made by different manufacturers in India and Indonesia, have been linked to the deaths of more than 300 children – mainly aged under 5 – from acute kidney injury in Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan.

The stated manufacturer of the medicines in the latest alert was India’s QP Pharmachem, based in Punjab and the marketer of the product was Trillium Pharma, based in India’s Haryana, the WHO said.

Neither QP Pharmachem nor Trillium have provided guarantees to WHO on the safety and quality of these products, the agency said in the statement.