Regardless of where you stand on the topic of birth control, we can all agree that drugs should be properly packaged and work as intended. A recent Today article reported on an instance where that unfortunately wasn’t the case. Lupin Pharmaceuticals voluntarily recalled one lot of Mibelas 24 Fe birth control due to a packaging error that put placebo pills at the beginning of the pack, rather than at the end.
Women who received pills from lot L600518 and took them in order are at risk of unintended pregnancy. Luckily, the placebo pills are brown rather than the typical white, so there’s a visual indicator that tells which is which. Northwestern’s Dr. Laura Streicher offered some advice to those who have already begun a pack of out-of-sequence pills and have had sex: “Pray. And continue to take the rest of the pack and use back-up contraception for the remainder of the cycle, such as condoms. If they don’t get their period when they finish the pack, do a pregnancy test.”
