The Min­istry of Health (MoH), via its Chem­istry, Food and Drug Di­vi­sion (CFDD) is ad­vis­ing of the re­call of all lots of the Hi­malayan Pain Re­lief Tea pack­ets.

In a state­ment the Min­istry said the re­call, is­sued by WS Glob­al, head­quar­tered in Brook­lyn, New York, is due to the pres­ence of un­de­clared drug in­gre­di­ents, Di­clofenac and Dex­am­etha­sone. The prod­uct is used as tea and is pack­aged in a light-yel­low box con­tain­ing 6 tea pack­ets, print­ed with the bar­code 0841920015.

Di­clofenac is a non-steroidal an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry drug (com­mon­ly re­ferred to as NSAIDs). This hid­den drug in­gre­di­ent may in­ter­act with oth­er med­ica­tions and sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease the risk of ad­verse events, par­tic­u­lar­ly when con­sumers use mul­ti­ple NSAID-con­tain­ing prod­ucts.

Dex­am­etha­sone is a cor­ti­cos­teroid, com­mon­ly used to treat in­flam­ma­to­ry con­di­tions. The un­de­clared dex­am­etha­sone in Hi­malayan Pain Re­lief Tea may cause se­ri­ous side ef­fects when com­bined with oth­er med­ica­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease is­sued by WS Glob­al, INC Brook­lyn, NY, the prod­uct was dis­trib­uted through Ama­zon (in­ter­net) and on­line on­ly.

How­ev­er, the Min­istry said out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, it ad­vis­es peo­ple who may be in pos­ses­sion of the re­called prod­uct to dis­con­tin­ue use im­me­di­ate­ly and to re­turn the prod­uct to the place of pur­chase where pos­si­ble.