hyderabad health authorities in lebanon and yemen have redflagged a cancer drug made by celon labs in hyderabad after they found lifethreatening bacteria pseudomonas in one of the batchesthe ministry of health has informed the lok sabha that the world health organisation who had issued an alert about four substandard and contaminated products including celon labs methotrexate an injectable chemotherapy agent and immune system suppressanthealth authorities in yemen and lebanon ran tests on the drug after they observed adverse events in children and found it to be contaminated patients receiving methotrexate treatment may have weakened immune systems and be more vulnerable to opportunistic infections the alert saidit pointed out that the drug may have reached the two countries through informal markets the batch mti2101baq was meant to be sold only in india and both the west asian countries procured it outside the regulated supply chainthe manufacturer could not guarantee the safety of the product that was not destined for these markets who said the organisation is worried that the drug may also have been distributed to other countries through informal markets joint director of telangana drug control administration g ramdhan told toi we have issued a showcause notice to celon labs and told them to stop production of the drugcelon laboratories a speciality generics firm focussed on critical care and oncology was acquired by the ukbased biopharma player znz pharma 2 limited for rs 364 crore in november 2020 znz pharma which picked up 74 stake is backed by the uks publicly owned impact investor cdc group plcthis was the third instance in recent times of indian drugs coming under a cloud last october maiden pharmaceuticals ltd from haryana was shut down after who linked a cough syrup manufactured by it to the death of 69 children in gambia recently the production licence of noidabased marion biotech was suspended after a syrup it manufactured was linked to the death of 18 children in uzbekistan last year