New Delhi: Indian authorities ordered a cough syrup manufacturer linked to the deaths of a dozen children in Cameroon to stop production, the latest drugmaker the country has taken action against after a spate of tainted medical exports.
The government of the central state of Madhya Pradesh “directed” Indore-based Riemann Labs Pvt. Ltd. to halt manufacturing following a joint inspection by the country’s central and state-level drug regulators, Deputy Health Minister Bharati Pravin Pawar told lawmakers in New Delhi on Tuesday.
A phone number listed on Riemann Lab’s website was switched off and the company didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
The inspection of Riemann Lab’s came after Bloomberg News reported that Cameroonian officials suspected a batch of Naturcold, showing a manufacturing license number matching Riemann Labs, of having caused the death of a dozen children.
It was the third set of fatalities associated with contaminated Indian cough syrup in a year, putting country’s $50 billion drug-making industry under heightened scrutiny. The others were in Gambia and Uzbekistan.
A director at Riemann told Bloomberg News in June that the medicine, which appeared in a photo obtained from Cameroonian health officials, “looked like” the firm’s products. However, they said that Riemann followed strict quality controls and that counterfeiting is common. The World Health Organization last month said it had more than 200 times the acceptable amount of toxic diethylene glycol.
Pawar didn’t name the cough syrup sold by Riemann in Cameroon, but noted that authorities have halted production and suspended licenses of three other drugmakers following WHO alerts over tainted cough medicine.
Since June, India has also made it compulsory for cough-syrup makers to send samples to a government-approved laboratory and obtain a certificate of analysis before their products can be exported.
