Calls for regulation after father of two died overdosing on anti-diarrhoea medication

Manchester authorities have called for better regulation on over-the-counter diarrhoea medication after a young father died after from an overdose of Loperamide earlier in 2017.

Also known by the brand name imodium, it is a popular and widely sold medication that is known to give a high when taken at very high doses.

Aaron McCaffrey, 27, was reportedly taking 150 tablets a day due to his addiction and was found with empty packaging for 250 tablets on the day he collapsed.

He was found in the bathroom of a Manchester supermarket and put into a medically induced coma by doctors from which he never woke up.

Six days after being found, McCaffrey died after a series of cardiac arrests and brain damage. McCaffrey was understood to have kept up his habit by buying boxes of tablets from several different places at a time.

When he was found with the empty boxes, there were also multiple receipts showing he had shopped in more than one place to get the loperamide.

According to The Times, assistant coroner for South Manchester, Rachel Galloway sent a formal recommendation to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) with concerns over the lack of a limit to how much loperamide one person could buy from a single shop.

MHRA had also reportedly said that McCaffrey was not the only victim to the drug but that five people have overdosed on the drug, with two cases ending fatally.

Speaking to the Manchester Evening News soon after his death, McCaffrey's girlfriend, Leanne Harvey, said that doctors were "shocked" when they discovered her boyfriend's habit. "For us it was scary because they said they hadn't seen anything like it, and we didn't know what was going to happen to him," she told the paper.