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Martin Wong

The Food and Health Bureau has decided to revamp the pharmaceutical safety system in Hong Kong after a drug contamination scare.
The Department of Health announced on Friday that the drug allopurinol,  used by 40,000 people for chronic gout, was linked to the rare fungal infection that has killed at least five patients at Queen Mary Hospital. 
These patients died after developing  intestinal mucormycosis. 
Allopurinol is produced by local drug maker Europharm, which supplies 41 kinds of medicine to public hospitals. 
The health department does not test drugs in laboratories.
Secretary for Food and Health York Chow Yat-ngok said  yesterday that he had instructed the department to 'comprehensively review and improve the monitoring mechanism of drug manufacturing and take reference of overseas experience to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents'.
A government source said later last night that the department would start testing drugs produced in Hong Kong and drug makers would have to conduct their own product tests.
The Hospital Authority had also been instructed to review its 'single-supplier' drug-procurement procedure.  
The Department of Health and the Hospital Authority yesterday decided not to recall all Europharm drugs - including a diabetic drug called metformin  being used by 200,000 patients - due to inconclusive evidence about their  danger. 
Europharm has ceased production since the incident. More than 1,000 drug samples were collected from the factory for testing. Results will be available before Friday.
It is understood that University of Hong Kong tests yesterday found that metformin was not contaminated.
Director of Health Lam Ping-yan said yesterday that it would have been an easy but irresponsible decision for him to recall all Europharm-made drugs. 
'Hundreds of thousands of patients use these drugs,' Dr Lam said. 'It could have caused severe confusion had I asked patients not to consume them and found out later these drugs were safe.' 
Government testing found four batches of allopurinol manufactured from April to November last year were contaminated by a fungus called Rhizopus microsporus - at 10 times over the permitted level.
'The concerned granules were found to have been stored  ... for five to 14 days before they were turned into tablets. During storage  ... mould can grow,' Dr Lam said.



Drug scare sparks revamp of safety system