Maria Fransisca Lahur, Jakarta – The Food and Drugs Monitoring Agency (BPOM) has cracked down on the circulation of syrup medicines that is concluded to be the cause behind the acute kidney injury cases that had killed over 133 to date. Not only has the agency recalled all of the drugs deemed dangerous from the market, but the agency is also cyber patrolling across e-commerce platforms.Head of BPOM Penny K. Lukito called for people's attentiveness to a medicine's quality prior to making a purchase. "Out of the three that do not pass the requirement, many are sold online. This is why we have worked alongside the Communication and Informatics Ministry upon following up on 1,400 links, and this is part of the BPOM cyber patrol," said Penny at the Bogor Presidential Palace on October 24.
Up until Friday last week, the BPOM has also worked alongside the Indonesian E-Commerce Association (idEA) upon taking down over 4,000 links that lead users to syrup medicine products that are already deemed a health hazard.
Despite the wide coverage from the media on syrup medicines being declared unsafe, sales in e-commerce continue to exist. The three products in question are Unibebi Cough Syrup, Unibebi Fever Syrup, and Unibebi Fever Drops.
Tempo found that the 60 ml Unibebi Cough Syrup was still being sold in several e-commerce stores. The status of the store is still active at the time of writing this article with the drugs sold at an affordable price between Rp5,000 – Rp5,500.