Chapter 1: Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
Overview
The geography and complexity of drug manufacturing have changed dramatically during recent decades, presenting serious new challenges to oversight and increasing the risk that substandard drugs will reach patients. As drug manufacturing moves to foreign countries, and pharmaceutical ingredients are increasingly purchased from overseas suppliers, ensuring manufacturing quality has become much more challenging for industry and regulators alike.
The FDA's regulatory presence in foreign countries is lower than in the United States, and FDA inspectors infrequently travel to developing countries such as India and China, where much of U.S. manufacturing has moved.93–95 With less oversight, manufacturers may not rigorously observe quality measures, and in some cases individuals manage to deliberately substitute cheaper materials for high-quality ingredients. While the vast majority of drugs in the United States is safe, these changes create significant risks of rare but potentially serious events by which U.S. patients are harmed by substandard or adulterated drugs. This chapter explores the trend toward globalized manufacturing and sourcing of ingredients, and the resulting challenges in industry supply chain quality control.
Read Full Section:Pharmaceutical Manufacturing: Globalization and Quality Management (PDF)
Pew sent a comment letter to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the Pharmaceutical Compounding Quality and Accountability Act. This bill takes steps toward clarifying state and federal oversight of compounding, including an important increase in FDA supervision of certain activities—specifically, the compounding of sterile medicines that are shipped interstate.
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Representative Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, on Thursday became the latest lawmaker to propose legislation that would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration greater regulatory authority over drug compounding.
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On Thursday, May 23, the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Health held a hearing, entitled "Examining Drug Compounding." Gabrielle Cosel, a drug safety expert, testified on the need to clarify oversight of compounding pharmacies on the state and federal level.
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Public health and consumer advocacy groups are attacking Senate legislation designed to tighten oversight of specialized pharmacies such as the one at the center of this past fall’s deadly meningitis outbreak, saying it does not adequately address health risks.
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An Ohio legislator’s plan to establish a nationwide prescription drug tracking system to protect patients from fake drugs was approved by the House Commerce Committee.
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