Experts: overuse of antibiotics can harm children

Beijing - Medical experts have again warned the public about the risks of improper drug use by pointing out that more than a million children on the mainland have been made deaf by misuse of the antibiotic streptomycin.

Of the 1.8 million deaf children on the Chinese mainland, 60 percent lost their hearing because of improper drug use, largely related to streptomycin, said Yang Zhiyin, director of the behavioral medicine branch of the Chinese Medical Association.

Each year on the mainland about 200,000 people die from adverse drug events and 40 percent of the deaths are related to the abuse of antibiotics, Yang told the Beijing-based Health News.