We received information from the American Association of Poison Control Centers in their Summer 2010 newsletter, Poison Line that the CDC is very concerned about unintentional ingestion of medications in children.
From the newsletter:
“In the fall of 2008, the CDC began the PROTECT initiative, an initiative aimed at addressing the issue of unsupervised, accidental ingestions of medications in children. The CDC first established an advisory board and convened at the CDC in
Among those invited to attend were representatives from groups including, but not limited to, the CDC, FDA, CPSC, AAP, Consumer Healthcare Products Association, American Pharmacists’ Association, Emory University, NY University, pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline and McNeill, as well as packaging companies.
The first action of business was to engage stakeholders on this public health issue and then identify and prioritize the top issues in preventing medication overdoses.
The group decided to work to reduce unsupervised ingestions; to reduce administration errors; to improve and focus caregiver education and to promote continued research on unanswered questions.
After that, four work groups were formed to effect concrete actions to address each of the four identified issues.
Group 1 was asked to develop industry guidance to facilitate packaging designed to limit the dose of unsupervised ingestions.
Group 2 was to address the standardization of dosing abbreviations for volumetric measurements.
Group 3 was to identify the key messages for the national education campaign.
Group 4 was to conduct risk factor/root cause analysis research of key unanswered questions.
To date, four Advisory Board meetings have been held along with work group conference calls throughout the 2-year process, all in advancement of the identified goals. Board members will meet again in the fall for a planned media event to roll out the PROTECT campaign.”
