..
It contains ephedra, a key ingredient used to make the drug methamphetamine — commonly known as meth.
“Ephedra can pose serious safety risks to patients, including cardiac toxicity, irreversible eye damage and severe depletion of blood sugar,” a TGA spokesperson said.
By Nicole Gong
Posted 20h ago
Key points:
- Some members of the Chinese community have been stocking up on the medicine to treat COVID-19 symptoms, despite it being illegal in Australia
- Lianhua Qingwen capsules have been found on Asian supermarket shelves in Melbourne
- The TGA has not approved the medicine in Australia because it contains a key ingredient used to make methamphetamine
.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has not given approval for the medicine to be legally supplied in Australia because it contains ephedra, a key ingredient used to make the drug methamphetamine — commonly known as meth.
“Ephedra can pose serious safety risks to patients, including cardiac toxicity, irreversible eye damage and severe depletion of blood sugar,” a TGA spokesperson said.
.
Ms Li said she did not know Lianhua Qingwen was prohibited in Australia when she ordered it online.
“I didn’t know Lianhua Qingwen contains ephedra … I wasn’t sure if the medication was illegal or if that’s just a folk legend,” she said.
It appears Ms Li might not be the only one. The medication has been in high demand among the Chinese community as a COVID treatment during the Omicron outbreak.
It has even been found stocked in Asian supermarkets in Melbourne.
Lianhua Qingwen maker Shijiazhuang Yiling Pharmaceutical told the ABC the company had never exported, sold or supplied the medicine to Australia because it was not registered in the country and it did not have an import licence here.
What is Lianhua Qingwen?
Lianhua Qingwen was developed during the SARS outbreak in 2003 and it has been widely used for treating the common cold in China with no prescription required.
It is made using traditional Chinese herbal medicines, including forsythia, Japanese honeysuckle flower, ephedra and isatis root.
The medicine is claimed to detoxify the lungs and clear heat.
Hui Yang, an associate professor of preventive medicine and general practice at Monash University, told the ABC traditional Chinese medicine had a long history and a solid public support base in China.
“Chinese medicine is not only medicine itself, but also an important part of Chinese culture,” he said.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Lianhua Qingwen has been approved by the National Medical Products Administration in China for “treatment of mild symptoms of fever, cough and fatigue caused by the coronavirus”.
The TGA said it was aware of the traditional use of ephedra in Chinese medicine to treat illnesses such as the common cold and asthma.
But in those instances, usage was “tightly supervised by a qualified traditional Chinese medicine practitioner (due to its toxicity)”, the TGA added.
“Ephedra is not approved as a COVID-19 medicine and should not be treated as such.”
In 2020, the Australian Border Force (ABF) seized around 1.3 million capsules containing ephedra.
That number dropped to just under 145,000 in 2021, which the ABF said could be related to the timing of COVID-19 outbreaks in Australia.
The ABF was not able to confirm how many capsules were Lianhua Qingwen.
.
Unlike the medicine distributed in China, the capsules sold in the Asian supermarkets in Melbourne had packaging written in English and did not have ephedra listed among the ingredients.
Xiaoxiong Zhou, the vice-president of the branding centre at Shijiazhuang Yiling Pharmaceutical, told the ABC: “The exported Lianhua Qingwen uses different packaging according to the regulations of different countries/regions, but there is no difference in the ingredients.”
He added the medicine had obtained registration approvals or sales licences in 27 countries by January 2022, but not in Australia.
..
weehingthong 