Made in India

There is a potentially unpleasant situation brewing for Pharmac. The US Food and Drug Administration has just banned drug imports from the Indian company Ranbaxy. This is because they have not addressed quality control concerns that were uncovered in a March audit. New Zealand is likely to follow suit and ban the import of these drugs, three, of which, are subsidized by Pharmac and are widely used. Pharmac is also testing our current stock of these drugs, The drugs are Amoxycillin syrup and Cefaclor capsules, both commonly used antibiotics, and Aciclovir, an antiviral drug used for shingles and fever blisters.

If our current stocks are effected or if we cannot source an alternative supply, things could get very uncomfortable. Rapid depletion of the stocks of alternative drugs is the commonest consequence. Alternative antibiotics to Amoxycillin and Cefaclor have higher levels of side effects (which is why they are less popular). I don’t anticipate any huge consequences overall, but it does illustrate the risks that Pharmac takes when it approves the cheapest drug it can find. Imagine the consequences is these had been anti-cancer or anti-diabetic drugs?

Pharmac does an admirable job of providing us with one of the lowest per capita drug bills in the OECD. But there are consequences to this cheapness and this is one of them. It is not inconceivable that our drugs could become contaminated in much the same way as San Lu’s milk products. The scary thing here is that the evidence is that Pharmac and Medsafe will react very sluggishly to such a contamination. We have the thyroxine debacle as a perfect illustration of this.

I have no problems with the speed and depth of Pharmac’s reaction to the current complication. A temporary ban and a check on our current supplies seems a healthy response. I just wonder what the reaction would be if they had not been prompted by the concerns of the FDA. How fast would they have reacted if our commonest antibiotics had suddenly become far less effective? I have my doubts about this. I think Pharmac and Medsafe are geared to react to bureaucratic concerns like an FDA ban, rather than a genuine medical emergency.

We might be better off buying our generic drugs from more reliable places like France and Canada, than risk the vagaries of the Indian and Asian markets. I’m happy to get my shoes from Taiwan, I’m not sure if I’m quite so keen to get my blood pressure medication from the same place, no matter how cheap it is.

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