Accidental Poisoning in Children: Blame it on Medicines

Picture a child fiddling with his granddad’s Diabetes pills. Imagine how dangerous it would be if he were to ingest these. It could cause the child’s blood sugar to plummet to dangerously low levels. This is just one of the many scenarios that the accidental ingestion of drugs could possibly lead to. Incidents like these do actually happen and with alarming regularity.

Nearly 70% cases of poisoning in children are due to accidental ingestion of drugs

Unsupervised ingestion of drugs by children can have serious consequences and may even prove fatal sometimes. Often children have easy access to their medicines. The child may find the packaging attractive and may, out of curiosity ingest a medicine in quantities large enough to cause harm. Of late, we have seen a rise in the number of children reporting to us with an accidental drug overdose. This is a cause for serious concern. The fact that such incidents are completely preventable makes the rising incidence totally unacceptable.

Children less than 5 years of age tend to put everything they find into their mouths. These children may also be attracted to brightly coloured pills and syrups. Therefore if medicines are left lying within their grasp, the chances of accidental ingestion and overdosage increase significantly. An added danger in case of very young children is their tendency to share these medicines with other children, making the situation even more difficult to handle.

In children younger than 5 years, the risk of accidental ingestion of drugs is more given their tendency to explore. This is not to say that accidental ingestion of drugs is something that will not happen to older children. It can and it does. We could practically neutralize the risk if we could somehow prevent access.

Child Resistant Closure (CRC) – An effective solution at hand

Child resistant caps or Child Resistant Closure (CRC) mechanisms make it hard for children to access the contents of a package. In countries like USA child-resistant packaging is mandatory for most drugs. It would be desirable to have similar regulations in place in India. This measure alone would bring down the incidence of accidental ingestion of drugs significantly.

CRC - Current Indian Ratio

In India, some companies are using Child Resistant (CR) packaging for their products but these are mainly meant for export markets. Recently some companies have introduced CRC in the domestic Indian market for its pediatric products.

Accidental poisoning is common, especially among toddlers aged between one and three years. Give your child the Best Pediatric Surgery Treatment in Delhi.

The commonest forms of CR packaging currently available in India include ‘push through’ as also blister packs with thicker foil or paper/foil laminates. These require a greater effort to take out the medicine from the blister pack and ensure that the child gives up after a few attempts.  By making CR packaging a must for products that are harmful to children, a large number of incidents of paediatric poisoning due to drug overdose can be avoided.

With the rising incidence of paediatric poisoning due to unsupervised drug ingestion, the need for child-resistant packaging of drugs is being increasingly felt. The introduction of this concept in the domestic Indian market means that a large number of pharmaceutical companies might already be in the process of lapping it up. This might eventually lead to CR packaging being made mandatory in India. On the other hand, it could very well be that CR packaging being made mandatory in India forces these companies to follow suit. Be that as it may, whichever way the tide turns, consumers stand to gain.

Reference: https://delhi.manipalhospitals.com/