WHO issues warning on Indian cough syrup linked to 66 Gambian child deaths

The World Health Organization has warned that a deadly batch of cough mixture connected to the deaths of dozens of children in Gambia may have been distributed to other countries.

The agency on Wednesday placed a medical product alert on cough and cold syrups made by India’s Maiden Pharmaceuticals Ltd., which have been potentially linked to acute kidney injuries and 66 deaths among children in the tiny West African nation, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a media briefing.

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Four contaminated Maiden products were found in a laboratory analysis to contain “unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol,” the WHO said. Tedros added that the global health body is conducting further investigations with the company and Indian regulators, while recommending countries remove the treatments from circulation.

Calls to the drugmaker’s corporate office in New Delhi weren’t answered and the company, along with India’s medical regulator -- the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization -- didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

The deaths shine a spotlight on India’s $42 billion drugmaking industry, which has been heavily promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “pharmacy of the world.

India supplies many of the cheap, generic drugs sold in American pharmacies and hundreds of countries globally. But treatments produced in the South Asian nation have been the source of multiple manufacturing scandals in recent years, including the export of tainted heart pills.

Closely-held Maiden Pharma has been making and supplying medical products for more than 30 years and has a presence across multiple countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Russia, according to its website.

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