The number of children who have died in Madhya Pradesh after consuming allegedly contaminated cough syrup has increased to 20, Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla said on Tuesday, according to PTI.

Five children are undergoing treatment for kidney failure, the deputy chief minister said.

Of the 20 deaths, 17 were reported from Chhindwara district, two from Betul and one from Pandhurna.

“Some children who were older have recovered, but two children died [on Tuesday] and one child died [on Monday night],” The Hindu quoted Shukla as saying. “Earlier 17 children had died.”

The five children under treatment are admitted at hospitals in Nagpur. Two are at the Government Medical College, two at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and one at a private hospital, the deputy chief minister said.

After suffering from fever and cold, the children had consumed Coldrif syrup, resulting in vomiting and difficulty in urinating. The first death was reported on September 2.

The syrup is manufactured by Sresan Pharmaceuticals, a pharmaceutical company in Tamil Nadu’s Kancheepuram district.

The formulation has now been banned in eight states – Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Puducherry.

The Tamil Nadu director of drug control found on October 2 that Coldrif samples were not of standard quality. Three days later, Madhya Pradesh also reported that one sample of Coldrif had 48.6% of diethylene glycol in it.

The permissible limit of diethylene glycol as an impurity is 0.1%. However, drug officials Scroll spoke to said that the chemical is unsafe even in trace amounts and should ideally be completely absent from an ingestible syrup. Its presence is a serious quality compliance issue, the officials said.

On Monday, the Madhya Pradesh drug controller found two more cough and cold syrups – Relife syrup and Respifresh TR – contaminated with diethylene glycol, and labelled them as “not of standard quality.”

Also read: How adulterated cough syrup killed Madhya Pradesh’s children

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