Bayer issues urgent recall of ‘defective’ contraceptive pills

Pharmaceutical company Bayer has issued an urgent recall of a batch of its contraceptive pills due to defective packs.

The company, in a statement issued earlier this week, explained it had issued a class II type A recall of the YAZ PLUS tablets that contain 28 pills in a pack with the batch number WEW96J and expiry date of March 2026.

A class II recall refers to “medicines that possibly could cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health problem or mistreatment” while type A is “designed to reach all suppliers of medicines [such as] wholesalers, hospitals, retail pharmacy outlets, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, authorised prescribers and dispensers as well as individual customers or patients”.

The recall was done in consultation with the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra).

“This recall is initiated due to a limited number of packs found in retail pharmacies with a mix-up of the sequence of hormone-containing and hormone-free tablets, wherein some packs had 24 light orange hormone-free, and four pink film-coated hormone tablets instead of 24 pink film-coated hormone tablets and four light orange hormone-free tablets,” Bayer said.

The company explained that because the defective packs only have four hormone tablets instead of the usual 24, these will not “provide the expected contraceptive efficacy”.

Distributors and consumers have been urged to return affected stocks to DSV Healthcare or the wholesaler/distributor where they purchased it for credit. 

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