Exclusive - India battles big pharma over cough syrup abuse, reducing supplies


  • World
  • Wednesday, 14 Oct 2015

A councillor (L) talks to drug addicts in a classroom at the Bangladesh Rehabilitation and Assistance Centre for Addicts (BARACA) in Dhaka September 12, 2015. REUTERS/Ashikur Rahman

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian regulators are privately pressuring major drug firms to better police how they sell popular codeine-based cough syrups to tackle smuggling and addiction, a move that is reducing supplies of a medicine doctors say is an effective treatment.

India's Cipla stopped making the product last year owing to regulatory demands, and U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories and Pfizer have had to reduce batch sizes by up to half, cutting how much medicine their factories can produce.

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