95% of children's medicine packs have fatal flaws

Recently, the first conference on the spread and development of drug use for children in safety was held in Beijing. Representatives of medical, academic, research, production, and other parties jointly studied ways to solve the problem of child safety drug use. The “ White Paper on Children's Drug Safety Survey 2016 ” published by the Institute of Pharmacy and Economics of the South at the conference shows that the rate of adverse drug reactions in Chinese children is twice that of adults and that of newborns is four times, while that of children in China is less than 2%. Percentage of pediatricians is 200,000. Due to improper use of medicines, about 30,000 children in China each year fall into a silent world.

Only 60 kinds of drugs for children

1/2 tablets, 1/4 tablets, and 1/8 tablets. From newborns to infants, pharmacists at Beijing Children's Hospital often face the problem of pounding tablets into powder and subdividing them. The most troublesome thing is the parents of children. One parent said: "If a small piece is less than 1 cm in diameter, how do you divide it into 4 parts on average?

Wang Xiaoling, director of the department of pharmacy at the Beijing Children's Hospital, made a survey: There are 1098 kinds of medicines in the pediatric directory of 15 large-scale paediatric hospitals across the country. There are only 45 kinds of children's special medicines, accounting for 4%; 43% of the varieties have children's usage instructions. %, at least 50% of drugs have no children's usage instructions.

“Types suitable for children, such as syrups and syrups, are very limited.” Wang Xiaoling said that in the pediatrics list of the 15 children's hospitals, the dosage forms are the top ones for injections and tablets, and there are only 21 oral solutions.

The white paper shows: At present, the number of children suffering from diseases in China accounts for 19.3% of the number of patients, the current more than 3,500 kinds of drugs specifically for children only 60 kinds, only 1.7% of the total. More than 95% of drugs have no children's drug safe packaging and no special measuring devices; among the more than 6,000 drug companies in the country, only 10 are specialized in producing children's drugs, and only 30 companies have children's production departments.

Wang Xiaoling said that compared with adults, children's irrational use of drugs, drug errors caused by drug damage is more serious. The white paper shows that among children, the proportion of drug poisoning among all poisoned children has risen from 53.0% in 2012 to 73.0% in 2014. From the perspective of the age of poisoning, children aged 1 to 4 years accounted for 64.0% of children aged 0~14 years.

Wang Xiaoling stated that he hopes that the shortage of children's medicines will receive more attention in the future, so that doctors will no longer worry about not having "weapons," and the whole society must work together to tailor children's medicines.

Zhang Feng, deputy director of the Department of Pharmacy of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said that he will learn from international useful experience and effective practices, improve the construction of children's drug use laws and regulations, and study and formulate child protection regulations.

Yao Hongwen, director of the China Population Education Center, said that the safety of children's drug use in China needs to mobilize all social systems to give play to their respective functional advantages, and to work together to disseminate and educate people about the scientific knowledge of drug use.