Of course it’s safe - I can buy this medicine

Published: 2010-09-24

Many children are put at risk by parents’ overuse of OTC medicines for fever, coughs and colds, reports an Australian study presented to the annual International Pharmaceutical Federation conference, 30 August 2010. Half of calls to Australian poisons centres concern accidental overdose of children.

Study participants chose whether or not to give a medicine, when, and at what dose. They were then asked to measure the dose. Because doses for young children are often small, the risk of measuring wrongly is greatly increased.

“44% of participants would have given an incorrect dose, and only 64% could measure the intended dose accurately. We found that 55% would give medicine when the temperature was less than 38 degrees”, said Dr Moles. Paracetamol was used most often despite the child having no fever. Only 14% of carers managed the fever scenario correctly.