For a fourth time this month, a problem has been found with medication available in Hong Kong. The blunders have jeopardised people's health and seriously damaged confidence in our city as a credible supplier of medical products. It is an alarming state of affairs which must not be allowed to continue.
The first three times, it was with drugs produced locally. Now, an importer has been found to have been breaching packaging rules. This has undermined trust in the medicine we buy or are given by doctors, no matter where it comes from. Clearly, our system for manufacturing and supplying medicine is failing.
Secretary for Food and Health York Chow Yat-ngok has expressed his concern and ordered the setting up of a high-level committee to review the whole process. This is a welcome move. But the government must ensure it is not a case of too little, too late. Nothing short of a complete overhaul of the system is required.
Quality control and regulation of the highest order are necessary at all stages of the drug industry. To let down our guard is to invite disaster and put lives at risk. That is precisely what happened this month with drugs produced by local firm Europharm, which have been linked to the deaths of five Queen Mary Hospital leukaemia patients. The medication had been contaminated with fungus due to improper storage.
On Monday, the department said 25,000 metformin tablets supplied by local drug maker Christo to the Hospital Authority had yet to be registered. Marching Pharmaceutical was last week found to have extended its products' expiry date on labels beyond their shelf life. And yesterday, it was revealed that 2 million antidepressant pills could have been contaminated because the importer decided to package them despite not being licensed to do so. The firm may also have altered the expiry date on a painkiller.
The only way forward now is for far-reaching reform of the pharmaceutical industry to restore confidence and ensure blunders do not occur again.
