After scores of children's fatalities in the Gambia and Uzbekistan were linked to the medications, the pharma authority warned on Wednesday that India's government laboratories should give "top priority" to testing cough syrup for export.
Additionally, according to a mandate from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization, laboratories shall publish test results as soon as feasible after examining samples provided by producers.
The World Health Organization (WHO) discovered contaminants in cough syrups produced by three Indian companies, prompting India to make tests for cough syrup exports mandatory earlier this week.
Last year, syrups produced by two of these businesses were implicated in the deaths of 19 people in Uzbekistan and 70 kids in the Gambia.
The deaths damaged India's $41 billion pharmaceutical industry, one of the biggest in the world, and the government is now rethinking its approach to the sector in order to tighten up testing and raw material regulations.
The Wednesday order was distributed to all federal government laboratories, drug regulators in six states with a significant pharmaceutical industry, and one federal territory.
All Indian cough syrup exported after June 1 will require an analytical certificate from an official laboratory. If similar testing would also be necessary for the domestic market, the Health Ministry has not responded to Reuters' requests for comment.
However, pollutants were found in numerous medications made by Marion Biotech, whose cough syrups were linked to deaths in Uzbekistan. Maiden Pharmaceuticals Ltd. cough syrups were tested in India and were associated to the deaths of children in the Gambia, but no poisons were discovered. The businesses dispute any wrongdoing. (Reuters)
