WHO issues alert about another India-made syrup, flags ‘substandard’ quality

The World Health Organization on Monday issued an alert about a batch of India-made common cold syrup, saying that it was of substandard quality.

This was the fifth time in the past year that the global health body issued such an alert about syrup medications manufactured in India.

The World Health Organization issued the latest alert with respect to a batch of the Cold Out syrup, which was manufactured by Fourrts (India) Laboratories for an Indian firm named Dabilife Pharma. Samples from the batch that were obtained in Iraq were found to contain unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol as contaminants, the global health body said.

Ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol can cause vomiting, convulsions, affect the circulatory system and cause acute renal failure. The World Health Organization said that the acceptable safety limit for both ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol is no more than 0.10%.

The health body said that neither the manufacturer nor the marketer of the common cold syrup have provided guarantees to it about the safety of the product.

However, Iraqi authorities have not yet reported any illnesses due to Cold Out, Bloomberg reported. Last week, the country’s health ministry said that the cold syrup had failed tests conducted by the authorities and that products circulating in the market...

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