The World Health Organisation (WHO) has alerted Nigeria and other countries on contaminated ‘Naturcold Syrup’ discovered in Cameroon
The organisation gave the notification in a Medical Product Alert posted on its website. It said that the substandard product was unsafe and their use, especially in children, may result in serious injury or death.
According to WHO, the 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.
Water is a “chemical solvent”. So is alcohol (ethanol), which is in nearly every cough syrup.
In fact, the solvent they used is extremely closely related to commonly used and acceptable solvents, namely propylene glycol (and polyethylene glycol), which you likely consume often. The issue is that (di)ethylene glycol has most of the useful chemical properties here, while generally being cheaper. This has happened often in the past in fact: products meant for human consumption that called for propylene glycol have had that replaced by (di)ethylene glycol as a cost cutting measure and that has lead to cases similar to this.
The real problem is cost cutting without safety checks and oversight, not “chemicals”. The article even says as much:
Yeah, the problem is governments not having the resources to test everything properly.
In The Gambia (where they had 70 tainted cough syrup deaths last year) bereaved parents are suing the government for not checking adequetely.
It’s a tough situation.
One could argue that if they don’t have the resources to test drugs they produce then they shouldn’t produce them. But that’s a very privileged statement: if it doesn’t have the resources to test what it’s making it likely doesn’t have the resources to import drugs either. By making drugs for domestic consumption they’re able to help more people than they would otherwise. The issue, obviously, comes from bad actors in the supply chain. If there’s money to be made, people will do bad things, and I’m not sure how to prevent that. You can punish after the fact, but when people’s (especially kids’) lives are lost before you can put a stop to it, that’s hardly an acceptable solution.
They did not produce these drugs.
The cough syrup that poisoned all the kids in The Gambia was made in India.
The poisonous ‘Naturcold’ cough syrup in the article, was labelled produced in United Kingdom but turns out the company name on the paperwork and boxes is fake.
I don’t think the answer is “if you don’t have testing resources then stop allowing medicine to enter your country”. That would lead to even more suffering and death.