Nigeria says no record of deaths from recalled cough syrup

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Nigeria's drug regulator, has disclosed that there is no record of children dying or falling ill from exposure to a batch of cough syrup made by Johnson & Johnson in South Africa that was recalled last week.

NAFDAC announced the recall after laboratory tests found an unacceptably high level of diethylene glycol, which is toxic to humans, prompting regulators in five other African countries to also issue recalls.

South Africa's drug regulator said on Tuesday that there was no record of adverse reactions in South Africa or anywhere in the world to the two batches of Benylin Paediatric Syrup it recalled.

It said it was conducting tests and investigations, as was manufacturer Kenvue , which now owns the brand after a spin-off from J&J last year.

"We hope to finalise these soon," the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority said.

Consuming diethylene glycol can result in acute kidney failure. The substance has been linked to deaths of dozens of children in Gambia, Uzbekistan and Cameroon since 2022 in one of the world's worst waves of poisoning from oral medication.

Fraden Bitrus, NAFDAC's director of pharmacovigilance, said the regulator had been testing cough syrups in response to those deaths, not because of any specific report of harm to children in Nigeria.

istina Paredero was diagnosed with a form of autism at the age of 18 and says her parents pressured her into agreeing to get sterilized.

We sampled a number of products. Some failed and some passed. This particular product had been sampled earlier, but we were not thinking of diethylene glycol, and because of this, we decided to test the product again," he said.

The recalled batches of syrup were made by J&J in South Africa in May 2021.