9 Mar 2009
The Department of Health (DH) today (March 9) asked Europharm to recall all Purinol tablets from the market as laboratory analysis of the four Purinol samples taken from Queen Mary Hospital and was earlier tested by the University of Hong Kong confirmed the presence of a fungus called Rhizopus.
A DH spokesman said investigation so far had revealed that during the production process, there was unnecessary delay in the step of converting the mixture of Purinol ingredients into tablets.
DH is conducting a full investigation into the production of all pharmaceutical products in EuroPharm.
"Further management of other drug items produced by EuroPharm will be considered depending on the result of laboratory tests on these products which was expected to be available later this week," the spokesman said.
DH hotline 2125 1122, which operates from 9 am to 10 pm, has so far received more than 3,400 public enquiries.