Press Releases

SFH on pharmaceutical issues

Following is the transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a stand-up media session at Legislative Council Building today (March 11):

Reporter: (Loopholes in the system in monitoring)

Secretary for Food and Health: I think the Department of Health has proactively discovered the irregularity of the labelling of the drugs. In fact, they are actually doing their job and taking actions to rectify the situation with the pharmaceutical company. The pharmaceutical company actually withdraws some of the products, so this is something that the Department of Health will need to give more factual explanation this afternoon.

Reporter: (No need to tell the public?)

Secretary for Food and Health: The Department of Health is actually going through the process of investigation on something relating to quality and not on safety. They need to get out the fact from the company before they can make any announcement. So this is the reason why and we are still going through the process right now. I think the Department of Health will be able to explain the situation and process later on.

Reporter: Is it necessary to diversify the suppliers concerning drugs?

Secretary for Food and Health: I said earlier that the Hospital Authority, particularly the biggest consumer of pharmaceutical in Hong Kong, does not actually procure the pharmaceutical from a single source for every drug. But for Metformin, this is something that they have done. They also have to review that in the future, this type of big volume medication, they should consider having suppliers from more than one source.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)


Ends/Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Issued at HKT 12:43

NNNN