CHENNAI (Kashmir English): India is investigating whether safety lapses in the supply of a pharmaceutical ingredient were responsible for contaminating cough syrup that killed at least 24 children in the country in recent months, foreign media reported on Friday quoting people familiar with the matter.
Three officials related to health and drug safety in Tamil Nadu state told a news agency they believe the solvent used to make a batch of Coldrif cough syrup could have been contaminated with a toxic chemical around the time it was supplied to Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, the syrup maker.
Reuters quoted the suppliers and an October 3 investigation report by the Tamil Nadu pharmaceutical regulator to say that the pharmaceutical company acquired 50 kg of the propylene glycol (PG) solvent from local chemicals distributor Sunrise Biotech on March 25, which had purchased it the same day from Jinkushal Aroma, a small company that makes fragrance blends for liquid detergents and other chemicals.
After having exclusively seen the report, the news agency contacted the Tamil Nadu Drugs Control Department for comments about its investigation but got no response to repeated requests.
Authorities have said the Coldrif syrup was heavily contaminated with a known industrial toxin, diethylene glycol (DEG).
The investigation is focusing on how the chemical was added to the solvent, which is used in cough syrup as a base for dissolving its active ingredients.
Cough syrups made with contaminated solvents
The children’s deaths, which began in September, have revived concerns about safety standards in the country’s $50 billion pharmaceutical sector, which was tarnished by the deaths of more than 140 children in Africa and Central Asia in 2022 and 2023 from Indian-made cough syrups made with contaminated solvents.
In the wake of those fatalities, New Delhi had pledged to improve quality controls.
According to Indian health officials, DEG is sometimes fraudulently or unintentionally used in medicines in place of pricier PG.
Ingesting high levels of it has been linked to acute kidney damage and death in children.
