The Iraqi health authorities have started withdrawing an Indian cough medicine that contains toxic chemical concentrations, according to the agency.bloombergAn official in the Kurdistan region, on Wednesday.
The head of registration at the Medical Oversight Agency in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Kosher Younes, told Bloomberg that the withdrawal process began nationwide on Wednesday, after a similar campaign had preceded it in the region on July 30.
Yunus provided a copy of a document from the central government’s Ministry of Health asking pharmacies across the country to recall the product.
Yunus said that no illnesses resulting from taking the drug have been reported.
Contrary to an earlier statement from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, the Kurdish official said that the product was approved for import and sale throughout the country after obtaining a license from the region, while a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health did not immediately respond to inquiries.
Bloomberg reported last week that a sample of Cold Out medicine purchased in Baghdad in March contained unsafe levels of ethylene glycol, a toxic industrial solvent.
The sample was one of 33 purchased by Bloomberg in six countries and tested by Valisher LLC, an independent laboratory in the US state of Connecticut.
Bloomberg shared the test results with Iraqi and Indian authorities on July 8.
This is the fifth time in a year that testing has revealed that drugs from an Indian source contain excessive levels of ethylene glycol.
The chemical caused mass deaths of children who drank Indian-made cough syrup last year in Gambia and Uzbekistan.
The label of the sample Cold Out tested by Valisher indicates that the manufacturer is Fortis, India.
Yunus said that several batches of “Cold Out” have been imported in recent years, the last of which was in January 2023, pointing out that all of these shipments have been subject to withdrawal requests from the market.
He said the Kurdistan Medical Monitoring Agency tested every batch before selling, but some batches were not tested for toxic impurities such as ethylene glycol because those tests were not required.
2023-08-03 06:35:34
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