India-made eyedrops cause deaths, blindness in US, following int’l cough-syrup crisis

After a cough syrup claimed hundreds of lives in different countries last year, India-made eyedrops have claimed four lives, blinded 18 people, and caused infection to hundreds of others in the United States.

After inspecting Global Pharma’s plant in India’s Chennai city, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the US, observed that the Indian manufacturer of eye drops violated several safety norms, as per media reports.

The firm also recalled the drops in February after a recommendation from the FDA. The FDA had also stopped imports of the products.

So far, the eyedrops have caused bacterial infections in hundreds of people across the US as the medicine-related traces were detected in the blood, urine and lungs of the patients.

According to media reports, the eye drops – made in India by Global Pharma and imported to the US under two brand names, EzriCare Artificial Tears and Delsam Pharma’s Artificial Tears – were linked to a deadly outbreak of drug-resistant infections in the US.

In March, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified 68 patients across 16 states with a rare strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause serious infections, especially in immunocompromised people. The drug-resistant strain had never been found in the country before the latest outbreak, it added.

Indian pharma history has a history of playing with lives as in December 2022, 18 children died in Uzbekistan after they allegedly consumed cough syrup ‘Doc-1 Max’, manufactured by an Indian firm.

Also in October last year, Indonesia banned the import of all medicines from India after the death of 99 children caused by the syrup which also killed another 69 children in Gambia.

In June this year, Liberia and Nigeria had confiscated over 250 containers of the deadly syrup.

Despite enjoying special concessions from the United States, India has proved to be an unreliable trade partner.

The hundreds of deaths caused by the innocent people claimed by the Indian pharma industry come at a time when India was already plagued by the killing and persecution of people from minority communities by the Hindutva forces.

The world had recently witnessed the stigmatization or blaming the minority communities, particularly Muslims for the spread of COVID-19 for which their properties were burnt and expelled from their localities.

The New York Times reported that the CDC was concerned the bacteria could gain a foothold in the US healthcare system.

“I think we are going to see the impact of this play out over the course of months to years,” Maroya Walters, lead investigator for the CDC’s antimicrobial resistance team commented.

The World Health Organization also issued an alert last October linking four Indian-made cough syrups to child deaths in The Gambia.