Corex cough syrup banned in India

 

The Indian government imposed a ban on codeine-based Corex cough syrups, as they posed a health risk, and soon after shares in the Indian unit of US based drugmaker Pfizer tumbled by 9 per cent.  Pfizer’s India unit said in a statement it had stopped selling its Corex cough syrup that contains codeine, a narcotic medicine which are combination of chlopheniramine maleate were among t344 drug combinations India banned over the weekend after a government panel of experts found they had “no therapeutic justification.”  Another US-pharmaceutical giant Abbot Laboratories’ India unit said it will comply with all legal requirements of the government order. This decision on Corex is more than like to hit Pfizer’s profit, which had sales of £17.6m  ( Rs 176 crore) in the nine months ended December 2015 from the corex brand alone.

Abbott India shares also fell nearly 3 per cent before recovering, as their products Phensedyl accounts for about a third of the Indian cough syrup market, with sales estimated to make up more than 3 per cent of the company’s $1billion India revenue. Doctors however, is the opinion that while drug abuse was a concern, the medicine was an effective cough suppressant.