CHINA LEX PHARMA LAW NEWSLETTER
Vol. 2, No. 3 - January 19, 2001
TOPICS THIS ISSUE:
- Vice-Premier Wu Bangguo Orders Crackdown on Sale of Fake Medicine
- Long-term Outlook for China Pharma Sector
- World Bank Loan to Rural Shanxi
- Digene Receives Chinese SDA Approval
- Fake Viagra Riddles China Market
Vice-Premier Wu Bangguo Orders Crackdown on Sale of Fake Medicine
Vice-Premier Wu Bangguo on Wednesday called for efforts nationwide to promote improvement in medicine supervision and administration and strengthen law enforcement to crack down on the production and sale of fake and shoddy medicine.
All the efforts should be concentrated on ensuring the safety of the people and pushing forward sound development of the country's medical undertakings, Wu said while meeting with participants in a national meeting on the reform of the medicine regulatory system, which closed here Wednesday.
It was agreed at the two-day meeting that despite the great achievements China has made in the medical sector over the past half century, some serious problems have occurred in the production and distribution of medicine in recent years, which has posed a threat to people's health.
Participants attributed the problems to the chaotic competition caused by excessive number of medicine factories, disordered distribution of medicine and an outdated regulatory system, as well as regional protectionism, which are all factors of the flood of fake or shoddy medicine in the Chinese market.
It was stressed at the meeting that all localities should enhance supervision over medicine production and distribution, and all government departments concerned should cooperate and support each other to ensure the success of the reform.
Participants also agreed that efforts should be continued to strike hard on illegal activities in the medical sector according to law.
(Source: BBC News)
Long-term Outlook for China Pharma Sector
Experts have predicted that China's improving economy, aging population and population growth will lead to a 12 percent annual rise in domestic drug demand in the next five years to reach RMB 218 billion (US $26.37 billion) by 2005.
The growth in the aging Chinese population has been pegged at a 3 percent growth rate, reaching 400 million by 2005, which will be an estimated 27 percent of the total population. Pharmaceuticals for the elderly account for more than half of China's total pharmaceutical consumption.
(Source: Asia Pulse)
World Bank Loan to Rural Shanxi
A public health program with a US $18 million World Bank loan has helped improve medical care service for 18.2 million rural residents in north China's Shanxi Province, or half of its rural population.
The project, with a total investment of RMB 230 million (about US $27.6 million), has been the province's largest rural public health program in the past five decades. Since its implementation in 1993, it has provided practical medical training programs for over 63,000 local medical staff, and it has helped provide surgeons for 820 villages.
The poverty-hit mountainous villages in Shanxi used to have no public health care service for the villagers, which had resulted in the spread of infections diseases among farmers and worsened their living conditions.
(Source: Xinhua News Agency)
Digene Receives Chinese SDA Approval
Digene Corporation announced this week that the Company, through its distributor in China, Science International, has received Chinese State Drug Administration (SDA) approval to market its Hybrid Capture(R) 2 HPV DNA Test and HBV DNA Test. The approval of the Digene HC2 HPV Test may help the company establish HPV testing as a more cost-effective way of screening for cervical cancer in China.
Preliminary data has shown that HPV testing detected more high-grade cervical disease and cervical cancer when compared with four other diagnostic methods, including liquid cytology (collected at the time of a Pap smear), conventional cytology and colposcopy. The approval allows the Company to expand on this data and to reinforce the utility and efficacy of HPV testing when used as a tool to screen for cervical cancer.
Evan Jones, CEO & Chairman of Digene Corporation, commented, "With cervical cancer being one of the most common cancers in women in China, HPV testing could be utilized to significantly increase detection of cervical cancer. While the incidence of cancer is seen to be low in the urban centers, it is known to be a major problem in the rural setting. Since there is little ability to introduce conventional screening protocols in these settings, the HPV test, with its self sampling capabilities and robust testing technology may very effectively replace the more traditional sampling and screening protocols."
(Source: PR Newswire)
Fake Viagra Riddles China Market
A recent report by the Shanghai Medicine Supervision Bureau and Viagra manufacturer Pfizer claims that nearly all the Viagra sold in Shanghai is fake. The real drug has only been marketed as prescription drugs in China since September, although the black market has a much longer history. Numbers released show that although Pfizer has distributed 12,000 Viagra pills in China, there are an estimated 2,000 medicine stores selling Viagra in the country that distribute an average four pills per day.
(Source: Agence France Presse)
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