Cough syrups: Why root cause analysis must replace reactive regulations

Deaths due to contaminated cough syrups have become painfully recurring. From fatalities in Mumbai in 1986 to deaths in Jammu in 2019 to casualties in Gambia, Uzbekistan and Cameroon in 2022 to now the tragic news of 11 children dying in Madhya Pradesh, the list of lives lost is long with no room to accommodate regulatory cold-feet. A link node running across has been the role of Diethylene glycol (DEG) , an excipient (jargon for drug carrying medium or filler to lend acceptability to a drug). While the investigations are now into the tragedy in Madhya Pradesh, the news hogging headlines is the cough syrup containing highly unacceptable concentration of DEG – as much as 48 per cent. Interrogate the internet and the permissible limit for this is less than 0.1 per cent.

The development