Export council suspends Marion’s membership after Uzbek deaths

Hyderabad: Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India has suspended both the registration and membership of Marion Biotech Limited after it failed to give details on the alleged death of 18 children in Uzbekistan after taking a cough syrup manufactured by the company.
The council had on December 28 written to Sachin Jain, the company’s chairman and managing director, to submit information within one day on the importer it had supplied the Doc-1 Max syrup to, manufacturing licence and product permissions.The council also advised the company to investigate the reasons for the serious adverse events and give an update with the findings.
However, it failed to submit the details, leading to the suspension.
Pharmaexcil director general, R Uday Bhaskar, in the notice, said the UzPharmAgency had taken serious cognizance of the matter. “The embassy officials were informed by UzPharmAgency regarding the presence of ethylene glycol in the composition of the batch of drugs to the level of 300 times of what is normally permitted, as per the medical regulations. The correct drug in the composition was to be propylene glycol.”
Marion Biotech had been registered with Pharmexcil as a small scale manufacturer since 2010.
Bhaskar said the alleged supply of substandard medicines by the company, leading to the death of 18 children, had brought a bad reputation to the Indian pharma industry and was also likely to have an impact on the trust of international agencies on the country’s pharma exports.