Syrup meant to heal turns killer, who’s at fault?

There are few who have not reached for a bottle of cough syrup when the cough gets persistent or the soreness in your throat just refuses to go away. From eighty-year-olds to 8-month-old infants, the cough syrup is the ubiquitous formula to get the cough to settle down when the weather changes or you are plagued by an infection. And allergies and respiratory ailments are increasing with the pollution spike, which could be the reason why the Indian cough syrup market is projected to grow significantly from 262.5 million USD in 2024 to 743 million USD by 2035.

It’s no wonder therefore that the deaths of 16 kids after consuming a particular cough syrup in Madhya Pradesh has triggered panic with several state governments rushing to ban the said medication and even testing other cough formulations. The kids, who were suffering from cough and cold, were prescribed the syrup by local doctors and instead of recovering, started vomiting with their kidneys failing. What adds to the agony of this incident is that these were tiny tots mostly aged between two months and six years who had their whole lives ahead of them.

Ironically, the World Health Organization (WHO) had earlier issued a warning over four India-made cough syrups which it suspected, were responsible for the deaths of 66 children in the African nation of Gambia. An analysis of these syrup samples had reportedly proved the presence of high amounts” of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol. Interestingly, diethylene glycol is again suspected to be behind the deaths of the Madhya Pradesh children.

So why was this medical negligence allowed to happen? There are reports which say that between 2007 and 2020, more than 7,500 drugs sampled in just three of India’s 28 states and three union territories, had failed quality tests and had been declared drugs “not of standard quality” or inferior. That’s obviously shocking and also points to a huge network of fake and shady factories churning out spurious drugs which resemble popular brands of big manufacturers.

Selling them and making a fast buck is not too difficult in an enormously huge market like India which reportedly consumed a staggering USD 23.5 billion worth medicines in the fiscal year 2023-24. In 2020, sales of systemic antibiotics alone were 12.1 billion standard units, say some reports pointing to the astonishingly large sale of medicines in a country where preventive healthcare has still a long way to go to catch up with the developed world.

Spurious medicines, fake pharma factories, abysmally poor quality of testing and faulty approval procedures of drugs meant for the market, corruption, poor packaging and bottling quality—the list of areas where India has to improve to make sure deaths do not happen because of medicines meant to save people for whom they are prescribed, is pretty long.

Questions will obviously have to be answered on how the cough syrup being blamed for the Madhya Pradesh deaths, was able to pass the stringent tests and analysis prescribed for medicine before they are supposed to enter the market. There have been serious lapses no doubt and stringent punishment will have to be handed out to those who dared to play havoc with the lives of these innocent kids.