Contaminated medicines global threat: WHO-UNODC link Indian syrups to deaths of children

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ISLAMABAD: Hundreds of children are being killed due to poisonous and regulatory failures.

It states that India, which is one of the world’s top drug exporters, is directly linked to two deadly incidents in recent years, where cough syrup kills 134 children in Gambia and Uzbekistan.

This historic report, released in July 2025, and titled “Pharmaceutical Experts Supply China’s contaminated medicines and integrity,” titled how to deliberately replaced pharmaceutical emissions, such as glycerin and propeline glycol-glycol, with industrial glycol, glycoline, glycoline, glycols, such as glycol-glycol. Is inactive alternative. Massive poisoning led to the pollution.

These toxic chemicals, which are commonly used in anti -freez and brake fluids, are especially deadly when eating by children. Nevertheless, they have repeatedly ended in pediatric drugs due to false labeling, criminal fraud and regulatory malfunction.

The WHO-UNODC report has identified India as the origin of two most deadly incidents of pollution in recent years. In 2022, 66 children were killed in Gambia after the use of Indian -made cough syrup, of which is dangerously high and for example. These products were developed by Median Pharmaceuticals, based in Haryana, and were recovered without proper safety tests or quality assurances. A few months later, another tragedy stood in Uzbekistan, where 68 children were killed after taking a syrup prepared by Marion Biootec in Uttar Pradesh. These syrup also contain the same toxic substances and severe kidney injuries.

In both cases, who issued a warning of global medical products, and laboratory analysis confirmed that industrial solvents were at a higher level of uncleanness at 0.10 percent (one million parts per million parts). These were not an isolated episodes because the report states that more than 1,300 people – most children have died worldwide due to contaminated drugs in DEG and EG.

The first major event was recorded in the United States in 1937, when 107 deaths resulted in the approved the US Federal Food, Drugs and Cosmetic Act. Nevertheless, such deadly events in Latin America, Africa and Asia, mostly in countries that have weak regulatory framework and poor monitoring pharmaceuticals chains.

Despite its reputation as the world’s largest producer of ordinary drugs, India has repeatedly failed to guarantee its pharmaceutical exports. The report has criticized the regulatory institutions of India, which makes them not examining, verifying, and examining it. In both matters Gambia and Uzbekistan, the justice was either not tested or used by unverified providers, in which criminal methods such as fake documents and its associated industrial grade chemicals.

Even after international grief and wasting young lives, India’s official reaction was lacking slow and transparency. Regulatory measures were delayed, public warnings were limited, and those who were not informed on time to avoid death.

The report indicates that although Indian drugs have helped millions, these serious mistakes have eliminated global confidence in the country’s pharmaceutical exports. The report calls for immediate reforms in India and other major exporting countries: Expert traceables must be mandatory, routine testing for DEG and EGA, those involved in fraudulent methods will have to deal with legalism, and they will have to deal with the technology.

It also warns that other countries are in extreme threat because Pakistan has been presented as another dangerous nation in the report where five contaminated syrups were returned from export markets in 2023, and who started toxic propileine glycol in 2024 about Pakistan. Although there have been no casualties in these cases, the same weakness in surveillance, examination and detection is clear.

The WHO-UNODC report believes that these deaths were not the result of a medical mistake, but the result of systematic negligence, corruption and regular failure. Unless the blocks of liquid medicine buildings – irregular, irreparable and unorganized, such tragedies will continue. Now the decision is on pharmaceutical giants like India that work decisively, offer safety before profit, and restore confidence in the chains of global medicine.