Alberta’s Opposition says it’s time to dump the remaining bottles of imported Turkish children’s fever medicine, given a new report that states it clogs hospital feeding tubes and can put newborns at risk.
NDP health critic Luanne Metz says Premier Danielle Smith’s government should check with health specialists to see if it can be used somewhere else, but it’s time to end the experiment in Alberta.
“We really should not be using this in our emergency departments,” Metz, who is also a physician, said Wednesday in an interview.
“It’s certainly not preferred for a parent, who would get rid of it for sure, and we definitely should not be using it in (feeding) tubes.
“So where might there be a place that this would be a preferred treatment? I can’t see it.
“We probably should get rid of it.”
Metz made the comment after The Globe and Mail newspaper report published earlier Wednesday.
The story, citing internal government documents, illuminated concerns the imported Turkish acetaminophen, with its higher viscosity, risked clogging feeding tubes for fragile patients.
Also, with its comparatively lower dosage and higher volumes, it put newborns at risk for necrotizing enterocolitis, which can cause damage to their intestines.
Alberta Health Services says the acetaminophen, known under the brand name Parol, was banned from neonatal intensive care units last spring, that no patients fell ill from the medication and that hospitals transitioned away from it in July.
“The decision to stop using the imported pain medication in our NICUs was made after frontline staff found that the imported product had a higher risk of clogging feeding tubes, due to a higher viscosity,” a statement from AHS reads.
The provincial health authority reiterated that no patients were injured or fell ill as a result of receiving the medication.
The medicine was part of a deal Alberta signed with Istanbul-based Atabay Pharmaceuticals for five million bottles of Parol and the ibuprofen known as Pedifen.
Smith herself announced the purchase at a news conference in late 2022, promising to alleviate a domestic shortage of children’s fever medication.
The purchase was immediately beset by delays as the province sought regulatory approval from Health Canada and sorted out packaging and warning labels.
By the time most of the first shipment of 1.5 million bottles had arrived in the spring of 2023, the domestic fever medication shortage was over.
The rest of the shipment never arrived.
Of those 1.5 million bottles, only about 9,000 were sent to hospitals and 4,700 to pharmacies in what critics have labelled a $75-million boondoggle, with taxpayers out tens of millions.
As soon as the medicine arrived, there were concerns that the comparatively lower dosage concentration of the Turkish medicine increased the risk of dosage errors. Pharmacists had to keep the medicine behind the counter to make sure customers who bought it were aware of the dosage change.
By the summer of 2023, AHS had already advised staff to switch back to the pre-existing medicines. However, last fall Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said Parol and Pedifen were not on the scrap heap, but would be kept in reserve for future emergencies.
LaGrange, asked Wednesday in an email if the Turkish medication could still be used in an emergency, declined to answer.
Instead she directed questions to Alberta Health Services.
AHS, in its statement, also declined to confirm the future of the two medicines while referring to them in the past tense.
“The additional supply of children’s pain medication provided assurance, long-term, for our stock of acetaminophen in AHS facilities at a time of a global shortage and high demand,” it said.
The clock is already ticking on the remaining supply. The Pedifen is set to expire in November 2025 and the Parol two months after that.
LaGrange, in her statement, reiterated past comments that the province bought the medicine with the best of intentions.
“We acted out of compassion and concern at a time when you could not find children’s medication on the shelves,” LaGrange wrote.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 10, 2024.
–with files from Adam Toy, Global News