The clerk looks at the bottles of syrup “CoDrif” syrup after the raid of drugs department and pharmaceutical workers in Kataria Pharmaceuticals, after death 11 children, nine in Madhya Pradesh and two in Rajasthan, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, 4, October, 202, 2025.
The Ministry of Health of the Union has launched an inspection based on the production premises of 19 drugs across six states, after Tamil’s food safety and drug management (FDA) finding samples of cough syrup containing diethylene glycol (DEG) over the permissible borders.
The statement comes in the middle of the ongoing investigation of the death of at least 10 children, allegedly associated with the consumption of cough syrups in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
“This step will help to determine the gaps leading to the quality of drug failure and to propose to improve processes to avoid such incidents in the future,” the ministry said on Saturday (October 4, 2025).
He added that, at the request of Madhya Pradesh, FDA Tamil took samples of coughing cough from M/S Sresan Pharma in Kanchipuram. The samples have been found to contain DEG per permissible limit.
As part of the ongoing investigation, the Ministry of Health stated that six samples were collected by Standard Control Organization Central Drugs (CDSCO) and testing that all six were found to be without deg and ethylene glycol (eg). At the same time, the FDA Madhya Pradesh said that out of the 13 samples taken by their team, three were analyzed and found that they were without DEG/eg.
Multidisciplinary team, consisting of experts from the National Institute of Virology, the Indian Council for Medical Research, the National Institute for Environmental Engineering, CDSCO and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Nagpur still analyze different samples and study the cause of death in Chindware in Madya Pradesh.
Deg and EG are industrial solvents used in antifreeze, colors, brake fluids and plastics. Sometimes they contaminate pharmaceutical ingredients such as glycerin, often due to poor supervision or suppliers using cheaper industrial material.
Since October 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) has issued six global alerts of medical products for over -the -counter medicines contaminated DEG/EG. The first non -standard medical products were identified in Gambia with other problems that appear in the WHO regions of Southeast Asia, Europe, the Western Pacific and the Eastern Mediterranean. It is estimated that there were at least 300 deaths among children around the world.
The COLDRIF syrup cough was also sampled for the analysis of the Madhya Pradesh drug regulation, whose results are still expected.
Six samples of drugs tested by CDSCO, which did not show the presence of DEG/EG, were other drugs and syrups, including antibiotics, antipyretics and Ondansetron, consumed by children who were ill in the CHHINDWARA district.
Published – 4 October 2025 23:01 is
