By Andrew Silver SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China will refine its centralized drug procurement policy, an official report said on Wednesday, after a recent probe into quality concerns of off-patent medicines approved for distribution to public hospitals. “We will refine the policy for centralized medicine procurement and enhance quality evaluations and oversight to ensure that our people […]
Health
China to ‘refine’ centralized medicine procurement policies
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By Andrew Silver
SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China will refine its centralized drug procurement policy, an official report said on Wednesday, after a recent probe into quality concerns of off-patent medicines approved for distribution to public hospitals.
“We will refine the policy for centralized medicine procurement and enhance quality evaluations and oversight to ensure that our people have full confidence in the medication they use,” said the report.
The report added that China would also “improve pricing mechanisms”, and create a “medical insurance catalogue” for innovative drugs to “support their development”.
China’s healthcare regulator in February said that the quality concerns were unsubstantiated.
(Reporting by Andrew Silver; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Shri Navaratnam)