Najet Mebarki - senior product marketing manager at SGD Pharma and Dr Rolf Abelman - managing direction at IVM Childsafe explore how the pharma industry has continued to advance its efforts to improve the safety of child-resistant packaging.
Unintentional poisoning continues to be a widespread medical emergency across the globe, with medication being one of the most common causes, putting children at the highest risk of potentially fatal accidents. In the European Union (EU), poisoning is the fifth leading cause of unintentional death among children and adolescents. Research from the European Child Safety Alliance estimates that 3,000 children under the age of 14 die from acute poisoning every year. More recently, this has sparked increased efforts into improving parental education in ‘child-proofing’ homes, as well as patients and stakeholders calling on pharmaceutical companies to recognise the importance of child-resistant closures (CRCs) in medical packaging. The reduction in the rates of child poisoning since 2010 in the United States (US) is indicative of a global decrease (Figure 1), but accidents can and do still occur, and regulations are continually evolving to optimise the safety of child-resistant packaging for drugs.
Figure 1: Estimated number of emergency room (ER) visits in the United States for accidental medicine poisoning under the age of 6 years. (Source: Safekids Worldwide).