Drug Makers Pull Kids' Cold Medicines

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association announced that manufacturers were voluntarily ending sales of over-the-counter oral cough and cold products aimed at infants. FDA praised the drugmakers' withdrawals as important for protecting babies.
According to FDA, very young children shouldn't take some of these commonly used medicines, and it also will ask if there's evidence that these drugs work in children up to age 12.
Health groups say that while low doses of cold medicine don't usually endanger an individual child, the bigger risk is unintentional overdose. For example, the same decongestants, cough suppressants and antihistamines are in multiple products, so using more than one to address different symptoms — or having multiple caregivers administer doses — can quickly add up. Also, children's medicines are supposed to be measured with the dropper or measuring cap that comes with each product, not an inaccurate kitchen teaspoon.

I read the news about three children die from unintentional overdose of cold and cough medicines in each year, and an accidental misdosings led to more than 100,000 calls to U.S. Poison Centers. It's easy to get confused about how much medicine a child has taken. Sometimes the parent and the grandparent are both giving doses, or the mom and dad. And sometimes parents give two combination products. And if the medicine didn't working what the family wants, instead of giving as directed every six hours, they give every four hours or every two hours. So, that is desirable decision that several leading drug makers will stop selling some popular brands of children's cold medicine.