Vietnamese Patients Suffer from Substandard Medicines

Vietnamese health authorities have detected an increasing number of substandard medicines over the past months, a situation that raises serious public concerns as there lacks a governing body responsible for the low-quality drugs already administered to patients, the Lao Dong newspaper reported on May 8. Since the beginning of 2015, the Drug Administration of Vietnam under the Ministry of Health has imposed fines on ten pharmaceutical producers for having sold medicines below standard quality, of unclear origins, and with murky ingredients. These companies will not be granted the license to register new medicines for one year, the newspaper said. Every year, the administration collected between 30,000 and 40,000 drug samples nationwide to test and verify. The result is substandard medicines in Vietnam account for 3% while fake ones take up merely 0.1%, data from the ministry showed. Head of the Drug Administration Truong Quoc Cuong, however, admitted that low-quality medicines remain rampant in the market despite regular inspection. To deal with the situation, he said authorities are tightening control on all products, including every medicine container imported by companies previously violating the regulations. While substandard drugs must be revoked from the market, there lacks an organization overseeing the withdrawal and informing Vietnamese patients of the news. Many drugs are already widely distributed before they get inspected and called back, leaving local patients vulnerable in their medicine intake. (Lao Dong - Labor May 8 p3)