There’s an important campaign being launched by the CDC to protect children from unintentional medication overdoses. The campaign is called, Up and Away and Out of Sight.
From the CDC website:
http://blogs.cdc.gov/safehealthcare/?p=2070
Keeping Medicines Up and Away and Out of Sight of Toddlers
December 13th, 2011 2:53 pm ET
Up And Away Campaign
Author – Dan Budnitz, MD, MPH, CAPT, USPHS
Director, Medication Safety Program
CDC Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion
Today, CDC announced the launch of an exciting new education program for protecting children from unintentional medication overdoses – Up and Away and Out of Sight. We’ve blogged about the large number of children who end up in emergency rooms each year from unintentional ingestions and overdoses after taking medicine without adult supervision. Our data suggest that many children get into medicine because adults forget to follow simple steps: close the child-resistant packaging and put medicine up and away—out of children’s sight and reach.
In the 1970s, the introduction of child-resistant packaging and memorable awareness campaigns, substantially decreased the number of accidental poisonings. Medicines now outnumber household products as the leading cause of children’s poison-related emergency room visits. It is time for a “refreshed” campaign designed for busy parents of the 21st Century.
The new Up and Away and Out of Sight awareness program directs parents to follow simple steps:
•Store medicines in a safe location that is too high for young children to reach or see.
•Never leave medicine or vitamins out on a counter or at a sick child’s bedside, even if you have to give the medicine again in a few hours.
•Always relock the safety cap on a medicine bottle. If it has a locking cap that turns, twist it until you hear the click.
•Tell children what medicine is and why you must be the one to give it to them.
•Never tell children medicine is candy so they’ll take it, even if your child does not like to take his or her medicine.
•Remind babysitters, houseguests, and visitors to keep purses, bags, or coats that have medicines in them up and away and out of sight when they are in your home.
•Program the poison control center number 1-800-222-1222 into your home and cell phones so you will have it when you need it.
This week, our medication safety partners will be blogging, including the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission (who regulates child-resistant packaging), American Association of Poison Control Centers, organizations that represent the manufacturers of over-the-counter medicines, and family practitioners.
There have been several news articles this past week regarding a new study to be published in the Journal of Pediatrics: The Growing Impact of Pediatric Pharmaceutical Poisoning.
From U.S. News and World Report, September 16, 2011:
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/managing-your-healthcare/treatment/articles/2011/09/16/accidental-medication-poisonings-in-kids-on-the-rise
Despite ongoing prevention efforts, a growing number of young children are being accidentally poisoned with medications, according to new research.
The study, which was based on data reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers between 2001 and 2008, found that medication poisoning among children aged 5 and under increased by 22 percent, although the number of children in the United States in this age group rose by only 8 percent during the study period.
“The problem of pediatric poisoning in the U.S. is getting worse, not better,” Dr. Randall Bond, of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, said in a hospital news release.
In conducting the study, which is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Pediatrics, the researchers reviewed information on over 544,000 children who landed in the emergency department due to medication poisoning over the course of the seven-year study period.
The vast majority (95 percent) of emergency department visits were the result of self-ingestion (the kids took the medicine themselves by accident), the investigators found. Prescription drugs were involved in 55 percent of the emergency visits, 76 percent of the hospitalizations and 71 percent of significant injuries.
Opioid-containing pain medications (such as morphine, codeine and oxycodone), as well as muscle relaxants, sleeping pills and heart medications had the biggest impact, the study authors noted in the news release.
The researchers suggested that the reason for the trend is likely due to greater availability and easier access to medications in children’s homes. They also noted that “poison-proofing” efforts, such as safe guards on packaging and child-proofing in the home, may have declined in recent years.
“Prevention efforts of parents and caregivers to store medicines in locked cabinets or up and away from children continue to be crucial. However, the largest potential benefit would come from packaging design changes that reduce the quantity a child could quickly and easily access in a self-ingestion episode, like flow restrictors on liquids and one-at-a-time tablet dispensing containers,” said Bond.
He added that these types of changes should apply to both pediatric and adult prescription and over-the-counter medications.
I’m adding a link to the news release from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Institution of the study’s lead author Dr. G.Randall Bond.
Title of the study: The Growing Impact of Pediatric Pharmaceutical Poisoning.
September 16, 2011
Number of Children Poisoned by Medication Rising Dramatically, Study Says
http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/about/news/release/2011/poisoned-by-medication-09-16-2011.htm
This past week there has been much news about an FDA released guidance document for manufacturers of liquid OTC drugs, calling for all such products to be packaged with calibrated dosing devices.
These recommendations follow from work done by a CDC led task force which resulted in the PROTECT initiative: http://www.cdc.gov/medicationsafety/protect/protect_Initiative.html.
From the Stanford School of Medicine’s, Scope – medical blog, http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/archives/2011/05/new-ways-to-prevent-drug-overdoses.html.
The task force has several recommendations to attack the problem:
1. Make child-resistant packages safer for kids. The task force suggests introducing passive flow-resistor devices on pediatric liquid meds and “unit-dose” packages that replace large bottles of pills.
2. Educate parents. The task force is starting an “Up and Away” campaign to remind parents to put medications in a secure spot immediately after use so little ones can’t get into them.
3. Improve labels and dosing devices on kids’ medicines. Several recent studies have indicated that children often receive improper doses of liquid OTC medicines because parents give them in household spoons, or because the included dosing devices are poorly marked. One study found that cups included with liquid medications were particularly prone to errors, with some 70 percent of parents putting more than 6 mL of liquid into a cup intended for dispensing 5 mL.
One of the first results to come from the FDA guidance is that over-the-counter drug makers have announced that they will no longer produce acetaminophen in concentrated infant drops; liquid acetaminophen products for children under 12 will be sold only in a 160 mg/5 mL concentration.
From abc NEWS/health: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/w_ParentingResource/infant-dose-counter-acetaminophen/story?id=13535850.
The Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA), the chief trade group for OTC drug manufacturers, indicated the move is intended to reduce dosing errors.
“CHPA member companies are voluntarily making this conversion to one concentration to help make it easier for parents and caregivers to appropriately use single-ingredient liquid acetaminophen,” said CHPA president and CEO Scott Melville in a statement.
Manufacturers will also be adopting syringes with dose restrictors for products intended for infants, the CHPA indicated, but cups will continue to be provided for older children.
The shift will begin in the middle of the year, the group said, but it warned that there will be a “transition period” during which multiple concentrations of the infant products may be on store shelves simultaneously.
“During the transition, the makers of these medicines also will work with retailers to ensure that, as the new medicines are introduced, the more concentrated infant drops will be removed from store shelves,” the CHPA statement indicated.
“Consumers should always read and follow the label and pay particular attention to the concentration, especially when a healthcare provider gives dosing instructions,” it added.
