JAKARTA: A lawsuit was filed against the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) for allegedly deceiving the public on matters related to cough syrup medication.
In filing the case in court here on Friday, the Indonesian Consumer Community (KKI) Head David Tobing said the medication approved by the BPOM were the reason behind the cases of acute kidney injury among children, according to the Tempo.co portal.
"We are suing BPOM because the agency is the main party in charge of [drug] supervision, both pre-market and post-market," Tobing said.
"First, BPOM did not thoroughly conduct a test on medicinal syrups. On Oct 19, BPOM announced five drugs containing EG/DEG [ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol] contamination. But on Oct 21, BPOM revised that two drugs [among them] were uncontaminated," Tobing said in a statement.
He noted on Oct 22, the agency announced 133 syrup-based drugs were safe and added 65 more on Oct 27. In total, 198 drugs were considered EG/DEG-free.
Then on Nov 6, BPOM clarified that 14 out of the 198 medicines were found to be contaminated with EG/DEG. "This action is clearly dangerous because BPOM has not carried out its legal obligations to properly supervise the circulation of medicines," Tobing said.
He asserted that BPOM was hasty in deciding the policy regarding syrup-based drugs and is also considered to have delegated the obligation to conduct the test to the pharmaceutical industry.
This violates the general principle of good governance, which is the principle of professionalism, he claimed.