All eye drops sold in Bahrain are safe: NHRA

TDT | Manama                                        

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com   

The National Health Regulatory Authority yesterday confirmed having no eye drops in circulation in the Kingdom, flagged as contaminated by the US Centres for Disease Control.

The CDC has warned against using a specific brand of over-the-counter eye drops after a potential link to a string of aggressive infections across the US was discovered.

On Wednesday, the CDC urged the public to “immediately discontinue” the use of EzriCare Artificial Tears following 55 cases of the “extensively drug-resistant” Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria reported across 12 states—including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin—between May 2022 and Jan. 2023.

NHRA confirmed that all the existing products available in the Kingdom are free of contamination. In the US, Patients had a variety of presentations, including inflammation, respiratory infection, urinary tract infection, and sepsis.

Outcomes also varied from permanent vision loss, hospitalization and at least one death. Upon reviewing the exposures among patients, it was determined that most of those presenting with the eye infection recently used artificial tear drops, and some noted that they used more than one.