Kordel Goes Off Brunei Shelves In Australian Drugs Scare
By Azlan Othman

Bandar Seri Begawan - Hot on the heels of the recall in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia of a large number of medical products manufactured by an Australian pharmaceutical giant, pharmacies and drug stores in Brunei have begun to clear their shelves of some of these products.

The brands included Kordel, 21st Century, Nutralife, Thomspon and Vita.

On Monday Pan Pharmaceuticals of Australia was ordered by the authorities there to halt its operations for six months and recall 668 of its products.

The order came after allegations by the Australian government that the company's drugs contained raw materials that had not been tested for safety and that it had manipulated laboratory test results.

The company produces almost 70 per cent of Australia's herbal vitamins and nutritional supplements and exports to many countries including Malaysia and Singapore. Some of these products are sold in Brunei too, it is understood.

The contract manufacturer exports to 40 countries under a variety of brands including market leaders Nature's Own, Cenovis and Bio-Organics.

Malaysian health authorities yesterday ordered Pan products to be removed from store shelves. It also advised distributors of the products to stop selling them immediately and urged consumers to discontinue using them.

In Singapore, drug stores cleared up all brands linked to Pan Pharmaceuticals a day after Singapore's Health Sciences Authority (HSA) ordered the firms' products be withheld from sale. Responding to an inquiry by the Borneo Bulletin, sources at the Ministry of Health said they would be issuing a statement today (May 1, 2003).

Following yesterday's report on the recall elsewhere the Guardian Pharmacy in Brunei temporarily suspended the selling of some of these medical products.

It removed stocks from the shelves and temporarily suspended selling 21st Century, Kordel and Vita products manufactured by Pan Pharmaceuticals.

However, the pharmacy, which has three branches in Gadong, Yayasan and Seria, said it had not received any advise from Brunei's health authorities. It received the information from Singapore's Guardian Office on Tuesday and immediately took these products off the shelves.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) ordered the Australian recall on Monday after an audit of Sydney-based Pan Pharmaceuticals.

Pan's licence was suspended for six months after the TGA found it had risked lives by releasing products despite failing to test ingredients, fudged test results and potentially contaminated products by failing to clean equipment between batches.

The raid by regulators followed the hospitalisation of 19 people who had taken Pan's travel sickness pill, Travacalm, dpa reported.

Parliamentary Secretary Trish Worth said testing of Travacalm found dosages could be up to seven times that listed on the label.

Worth said: "Some people were very, very ill. They tried to jump out of planes and off ships and things like that because of the hallucinatory effect. I've been reliably informed it was fortunate nobody has died." -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

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