In 2019, 11 children in India’s Jammu region died after consuming cough syrup contaminated with diethylene glycol (DEG), an industrial solvent. The syrup was made by Indian firm Digital Vision. More recently, the World Health Organization linked four India-made cough syrups to the deaths of 66 children in The Gambia, with lab tests confirming “unacceptable amounts” of DEG and ethylene glycol.
India’s $42bn pharmaceutical industry, which supplies 40% of over-the-counter and generic medicines in the US and a quarter of UK medicines, faces renewed scrutiny over quality control. The country has some 3,000 firms operating 10,000 factories, but analysts point to weak regulation, underfunded testing labs, and spotty enforcement. In 2014, India’s top drug regulator said following US standards would require shutting “almost all drug facilities”.
Official records show that between 2007 and 2020, more than 7,500 drug samples in three Indian states failed quality tests. These “not of standard quality” drugs lacked sufficient active ingredients, had impaired dissolution, or were contaminated. Public health expert Dinesh Thakur warns that many firms fail to follow good manufacturing practices, and that the total number of patients affected by inferior drugs could run into “hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions”.
Since 1972, over 70 people—mostly children—have died in five separate mass poisonings linked to DEG-contaminated drugs. The latest incidents have reignited concerns about India’s role as the “pharmacy of the world”, a label championed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
