Pharmacists are calling on patients to return the contaminated high blood pressure and heart drug valsartan to the pharmacy. The drugs are contaminated with the carcinogenic substance NDMA.
A month ago, the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate advised to continue using the contaminated medicines. The boxes had only been retrieved from pharmacies, but not from people’s homes. The pollution was very minimal in the boxes. The risk was low, according to the inspectorate.
Risk
New research from the US regulator, FDA, showed that the risk was somewhat higher with the heavier 320 mg pills. With four years of use, 1 in 8,000 people will develop cancer as a result. German research went even further: the pills could contain more NDMA than previously thought. Reason for the pharmacists to recall the medicines. ‘Our medicines must be of impeccable quality and we must be able to rely on that,’ says Gerben Klein Nulent, chairman of the pharmacists’ organization KNMP.
180,000
The Netherlands has 180,000 users of contaminated valsartan. Some of them have returned contaminated valsartan or have been converted to an alternative, according to the KNMP.
Read the pharmacist’s press release here.
The blood pressure drugs came from one Chinese factory. Plus previously asked readers: Do you still trust medicines from China?
