>In the Gambia, nearly 70 children died as a result of taking the syrups, prompting the WHO to issue a global alert earlier this month. The Indian authorities and the cough syrup manufacturer, Maiden Pharmaceuticals, said that the products had only been exported to the Gambia.
>The company has been blacklisted by Indian authorities numerous times for quality violations and is among nearly 40 Indian pharmaceutical companies blacklisted by Vietnam for exporting sub-standard products.
>Local media in Indonesia said that market traders were still selling the banned products, saying that buyers “know the risk”.
This sounds like a problem of lack of regulation, along with poverty leading to desperate decisions like buying the cheap cough medicine
Same as in India once upon a time. Although things have improved significantly. The thing is that every once in a while a scandal like this surfaces, leading to stricter controls and then things go back to square one. The issue is over regulations in developing countries were always one of the primary drivers of corruption and things get really tricky when we deal with industries like Pharma or Health. Poor people simply do not have much options, either consume cheap products or do nothing. I have observed that for a lot of non serious diseases sometimes doing nothing makes financial sense for people inadvertently.
>The company has been blacklisted by Indian authorities numerous times for quality violations and is among nearly 40 Indian pharmaceutical companies blacklisted by Vietnam for exporting sub-standard products.
>Local media in Indonesia said that market traders were still selling the banned products, saying that buyers “know the risk”.
This sounds like a problem of lack of regulation, along with poverty leading to desperate decisions like buying the cheap cough medicine