Doctors and health officials yesterday warned parents not to give antibiotics from their prescription to children, citing risks of overdose.
Children’s medical dosages are distinct from adults and require medical expertise to calculate, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital Linkou branch pediatrician Wu Chang-teng (吳昌騰) told a routine news conference at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Incidents have occurred in which parents gave sick children leftover prescription antibiotics in roughly eyeballed dosages, resulting in disaster, Wu said.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
Respiratory suppression, intestinal blockage, muscle spasms and heart arrhythmia are among the dangerous side effects of misusing cold medicine and other common medicines on children, he said.
Citing personal experience, Wu said he had treated a two-year-old boy whose grandparents gave him a 500 milligram amoxicillin tablet and unused fever medicine for an Epstein-Barr virus infection.
The boy had an adverse reaction to the antibiotics and developed nausea, vomiting, low appetite, loss of energy and rashes all over his body, for which he was hospitalized, he said.
Although children are at high risk of germ infections, whether they need antibiotics is a matter that should be left to medical experts, he said, adding that amoxicillin would not have worked on the viral infection.
Rashes and diarrhea are common symptoms of adverse reactions to antibiotics in children that might occur days after taking the medicine, Wu said.
In addition to overdose risks, parents doling out antibiotics willy-nilly could also err in giving their children too little medicine, giving rise to drug-resistant bugs, he said.
Parents should not demand doctors to prescribe antibiotics, buy over-the-counter antibiotics, use another person’s prescription, or stop taking meds without explicit instruction from a doctor, FDA Drug Products Section specialist Liu Chiya-ping (劉佳萍) said.
The instructions for taking prescription drugs must be followed to the letter, she said.
Since 2020, 154 children aged 12 years old or younger have developed significant adverse reactions to antibiotics, with amoxicillin accounting for 55 percent of the cases, FDA Deputy Director-General Wang Der-yuan (王德原) said.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
‘NON-RED’: Taiwan and Ireland should work together to foster a values-driven, democratic economic system, leveraging their complementary industries, Lai said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday expressed hopes for closer ties between Taiwan and Ireland, and that both countries could collaborate to create a values-driven, democracy-centered economic system. He made the remarks while meeting with an Irish cross-party parliamentary delegation visiting Taiwan. The delegation, led by John McGuinness, deputy speaker of the Irish house of representatives, known as the Dail, includes Irish lawmakers Malcolm Byrne, Barry Ward, Ken O’Flynn and Teresa Costello. McGuinness, who chairs the Ireland-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, is a friend of Taiwan, and under his leadership, the association’s influence has grown over the past few years, Lai said. Ireland is