Health Canada short on details for new kids’ pain medicine

Health Canada officials say more doses of children’s painkillers and fever medication will be available soon but it won’t say how many or where exactly they’ll be sent.

Senior officials are answering questions at a House of Commons committee as hospitals and nervous parents with sick kids at home struggle to find children’s Tylenol and Advil.

Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Supriya Sharma says the first signs of supply issues arose in April but it wasn’t until August that companies warned their efforts to increase supplies were failing.

Linsey Hollett, the director of health product compliance for Health Canada, says a shipment of ibuprofen from the U.S. has arrived and an air shipment of acetaminophen from Australia will arrive in the next couple of weeks.

But Hollett says the government is still working with the manufacturers to get permission to tell Canadians how many doses are on the way.

She also wouldn’t say where the medication is going, only that it is being distributed based on information from children’s hospitals about where the need is greatest.

(The Canadian Press)