By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Authorities in Indonesia have announced a total ban on the use of all syrups and liquid medicine prescriptions, as well as over-the-counter dispensary in reaction to the death of almost 100 children linked to acute kidney injury this year.
The health authorities in the Southeast Asian country before the Wednesday outright ban, had launched an investigation into unexplained increase in the number of children’s deaths from acute kidney injury (AKI) since January this year.
“Until today, we have received 206 reported cases from 20 provinces with 99 deaths,” the health ministry’s spokesperson Muhammad Syahril Mansyur told a press briefing.
“As a precaution, the ministry has asked all health workers in health facilities not to prescribe liquid medicine or syrup temporarily … we also asked drug stores to temporarily stop non-prescription liquid medicine or syrup sales until the investigation is completed,” he said.
The rise in childhood AKI fatalities in Indonesia comes as The Gambia’s government probes the death of 70 children from AKI linked to paracetamol syrups used to treat fever, which contained excessive levels of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol, in a scandal linked to four Indian-made cough syrups.
Officials at Indonesia’s food and drug agency said those products identified in The Gambia were not available locally and the ingredients they were comprised of had now been banned from all child medicinal syrups sold in the country.
The rise in Indonesia’s cases of AKI began in January this year, and accelerated further since late August, Mansyur said, adding that an investigation was launched last week.
“Since late August 2022, the ministry and the paediatrician association have received increasing reports of acute kidney injury. The jump is sharp,” he said, noting that 65 percent of cases had been treated in Jakarta.
Most of the cases involved children aged under 18, mainly toddlers under five years old, the ministry said.
