Quick Dips

Child-Resistant Packaging
Campaign Welcomed

A campaign to encourage the use of child-resistant packaging (CRP) for pharmaceuticals and poisons has been welcomed by researchers at Otago University Medical School, in the hopes of reducing the significant numbers of children poisoned in New Zealand each year.

"The arguments in favour of child-resistant packaging, based on research overseas, are so overwhelming that it is difficult to understand how such a relatively simple preventive health measure has been for so long neglected in New Zealand," says Dr Wayne Temple, director of the National Toxicology Group.

US studies suggest that widespread use of such packaging on medicines and toxic substances found in the home could reduce hospital admissions for poisoning, and the need for medical treatment, by up to 80%. Eleven percent of New Zealand children are involved in a poisoning incident by their fifth birthday.

"Accidental poisoning is the most common reason for children being admitted to hospital during the ages of one to four years," says Temple.

Child-resistant closures, foil strips and opaque blister packs have been found to limit the number of poisonings. Technical standards for such packaging in New Zealand were prepared and adopted in 1983, and updated in 1991, but have never been used. Lack of stock and a lack of awareness of the importance of such packaging has contributed to its low penetration in this country. Temple also says that the Department of Health grossly over-estimated, by 26 times, the cost of using CRP, limiting its use in the '80s.

The Ministry of Health has just launched a campaign aimed at creating consumer demand and industry support for CRP, including supplying retail pharmacies with examples of the various forms of child-resistant closures.