Thalidomide in South America

Mainly used for the treatment of leprosy, Thalidomide has been a ongoing teratogen in South America. The re-marketing of Thalidomide for the treatment of many other disorders is likely to make control of its intake during early pregnancy quite difficult. According to the members of ECLAMC (a consortium of birth defects surveillance systems in South America), there were only 34 Thalidomide Embryopathies detected by members of ECLAMC since 1965 (E. E. Castilla et al., Teratology 54: 273, 1996). The ECLAMC experts stress that the current systems will have difficulty to detect potential epidemics of birth defects attributable to Thalidomide.