Be careful when using orange medicine for children

(Baonghean.vn) - Recently, the National Hospital of Pediatrics has received many children who were poisoned with very high levels of lead in their blood, dozens of times higher than the poisoning threshold, and some cases have died. Most of these children were previously treated by their families for thrush, anorexia, drooling, stomatitis, etc. with orange medicine bought from traditional healers.

The habit of buying orange medicine to treat children's mouth diseases exists in many rural areas. This medicine is wrapped in newspaper by traditional healers, in powder form, and comes in two colors: orange and green. It is usually applied to the mouth of sick children. After using the medicine for a while, children show signs of fever, vomiting, convulsions, and in more severe cases, coma.

The original orange medicine for children is also called "Sam linh bach truật tan" and includes the following ingredients: ginseng (or codonopsis), poria, atractylodes, licorice, white bean, Chinese yam, lotus seed, platycodon, coix seed, cardamom. The main effect of the medicine is to strengthen the spleen and digest food. If two more ingredients, shijun (worm seed) and betel nut (areca nut), are added, it has an additional antiseptic effect. However, depending on the purpose of treatment or based on their own experience, some oriental medicine practitioners may add or reduce some other ingredients.

The recent phenomenon of children being poisoned by orange medicine containing lead has many causes. The medicine may be produced from medicinal herbs of unknown origin, unclean medicinal herbs that have been contaminated with lead during the cultivation process in areas with high lead content; or there are medicines that themselves contain lead such as duyen don, hoan don...

To be safe in using medicine, patients need to seek medical examination and treatment at reliable addresses, licensed by the Department of Health or the Ministry of Health. If it is a traditional medicine, it must also be licensed for production and circulation by the Department of Health or the Ministry of Health.

TV (General)