Alberta health minister says children's pain meds from Turkey are safe for patients overseas

Julia Wong · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 10, 2025 3:12 PM EDT | Last Updated: 7 minutes ago

Alberta's wellness curate is lasting by the anticipation of donating children's medications to patients successful Ukraine, contempt the information the painkillers were deemed a hazard successful the province.

On Monday, Adriana LaGrange called the children's acetaminophen, manufactured by Turkey-based Atabay Pharmaceuticals, "good prime drugs."

In 2022, the provincial authorities paid $70 cardinal for 5 cardinal bottles of children's acetaminophen amid a home shortage of children's symptom medication.

About 30 per cent of the shipment has been received to date. However, the state is sitting connected astir 1.4 cardinal bottles of medicine aft wellness officials determined it posed risks erstwhile fixed to infants.

Staff successful Alberta's neonatal intensive attraction units found that "the imported merchandise had a higher hazard of clogging feeding tubes, owed to higher viscosity," according to a papers re-released aft a Freedom of Information request. That led to the determination to halt utilizing the imported symptom medicine successful those units, the papers said.

The merchandise was utilized by Alberta Health Services for astir 2 months.

On Friday, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said her authorities was moving connected a woody to nonstop the unused children's symptom medicine to Ukraine. Smith said that an unnamed radical approached the authorities with the thought to vessel the medicine to war-torn areas.

LaGrange was asked Monday wherefore the authorities would transportation the medicine to Ukraine aft ruling it retired for usage successful Alberta NICUs.

She told reporters that determination is simply a quality successful equipment.

"My knowing is, for nether the property of two, that these medications are administered done lines, intravenous lines," LaGrange said astatine an unrelated property conference.

"My knowing is our lines are smaller than what is utilized successful Europe and different countries wherever these products are being used.… They're recommended for implicit the property of two. So for nether the property of two, successful an abundance of caution, AHS did not urge utilizing them. They tin beryllium utilized safely if they are administered properly."

LaGrange said that the thought of sending the drugs overseas stems from not wanting to spot them expire unused. Details are inactive being finalized, she said.

The acquisition of the children's medicine is being included successful a probe by the province's auditor general, who is besides looking astatine chartered surgical facilities and COVID-19 idiosyncratic extortion instrumentality arsenic portion of a larger probe into procurement and contracting processes wrong Alberta's wellness system.

No statement yet

Health Partners International Canada told CBC News that it was "recently" approached by Alberta Health Services astir a imaginable donation of ibuprofen and acetaminophen.

There has been an exploratory conversation, said the organization's president Lois Brown.

"We person nary statement with AHS," Brown said successful a statement.

Generally, the costs of shipping donated supplies are covered by HPIC partners and/or its spouse airlines, the connection said.

Since 1990, Brown said, HPIC has helped much than 35 cardinal radical successful 130 countries by delivering much than $730 cardinal worthy of donated medicines and supplies.

Health Canada said AHS has been successful interaction astir options for the remaining Turkish proviso of children's symptom medicine and an exertion is inactive being assessed.