Pharmaceutical officials warned yesterday that the drug Carba-mazepine, mainly used to treat epilepsy, must be taken with extreme care after it was alleged to have caused three deaths and seven illnesses in the past one and a half years.
The Department of Health (DOH) yesterday released details of the first six cases, consisting of three deaths and three serious illnesses.
The Law of Drug Injury Relief (LDIR,
Before the passage of the law, relief was distributed only on the basis of executive orders.
"We cannot be sure whether the drugs directly resulted in the three deaths," said the director-general of the DOH's Bureau of Pharmaceutical Affairs, Oliver Hu Yao-pu (
"But we are still providing relief in those cases on humanitarian grounds," Hu said.
The DOH provided NT$300,000 for each death as funeral relief.
Two of the three died of Stevens Johnson Syndrome, which causes massive and fatal skin necrosis. The other one died of liver-kidney syndrome.
The three cases of serious illness, resulting from the drug's side effects were compensated with payments of between NT$4,000 to NT$30,000. These three were also victims of Stevens Johnson Syndrome, caused by taking Carbamazepine for epilepsy.
"The problems caused by Carbamazepine in Taiwan are serious and hence we plan to improve the warning on the instructions for the drug," Hu said.
"We appeal to patients not to put off their awareness of the condition until over 50 percent of the skin gets ulcerated," he stressed.
From last January to the end of June this year, according to the DOH, there have been 104 applications for the compensation, 22 cases of which were approved. Of these 22 cases, six were deaths, two were cases where the person had become handicapped and the remaining 14 were for serious illnesses.
The total amount of relief was around NT$7 million dollars.
"The passage of LDIR was a safeguard for consumers," Hu said, adding that "only those applicants who take legal drugs properly will be eligible for the relief."
Revenue sources for the compensation fund include a levy on drug manufacturers and importers, as well as donations.
Drug manufacturers and importers have to pay 0.1 percent of their drug sales volume in the previous year under LDIR. Manufacturers or importers whose drugs are found to have caused injuries will be levied at higher rates, not exceeding one percent.
Within the past one and a half years, the drug manufacturers and importers have donated around NT$65 million dollars to the fund, Hu said.
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