By Jennifer Rigby

LONDON, July 20 (Reuters) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has requested the Indian authorities for assist in establishing the origins of a contaminated cough syrup that has been linked to youngsters’s deaths in Cameroon.

The U.N. company issued a warning on Wednesday a couple of syrup branded as Naturcold, which was offered in Cameroon and linked by authorities there with not less than six youngsters’s’ deaths. The syrup contained extraordinarily excessive ranges of the poisonous contaminant diethylene glycol, the WHO stated.

The producer of Naturcold is listed on the packet as Fraken International (England), however the UK regulator informed WHO that no such firm exists.

The WHO wrote to India’s regulator because the alert was issued on Wednesday, asking for assist in reaching Indian corporations which may be concerned, a spokesperson informed Reuters. Other nations have additionally been contacted, she stated.

The alert about Naturcold is the most recent of a number of comparable warnings issued in latest months about contaminated cough syrups offered worldwide.

In 2022, the medicines had been linked to the deaths of greater than 300 youngsters in Gambia, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. Another alert earlier this yr additionally stated contaminated medicines had been discovered within the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, however no deaths have been reported there. The WHO has stated the risk is ongoing.

All of the syrups are made by completely different producers, though in three of the 4 incidents, they’re Indian-made. The deaths in Indonesia had been linked to syrups made domestically.

The WHO stated this sample meant that working with India was a excessive precedence find out extra concerning the incident in Cameroon. It beforehand stated efforts to search out out extra concerning the cough syrup incidents and the availability chains concerned had been stymied by a lack of knowledge from the Indian authorities and drugmakers.

Officials in India and Cameroon didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. (Reporting by Jennifer Rigby in London; Additional reporting by Krishna N.Das in New Delhi and Amindeh Blaise Atabong; Editing by David Holmes)