Heparin Debacle Lead To A Decline in Chinese Drug Exports

Posted on 23rd February 2010 by gjohnson in Uncategorized

Baxter recall of heparin, contaminated heparin, heparin lawyer, heparin recall, heparin recall results in drop in Chinese Imports

China’s sometimes deadly quality control issues cut into the demand for its active pharmaceutical ingredients (API)s last year, but that will change this year, according to outsourcing consultant JZ Med.

The bean counter statistical analysis of this is really quite remarkable. From our perspective the decline should have been catastrophic, not single digits. It just goes to show how little this huge debacle for America’s most ill patients, has stayed out of the news cycle. By point of comparison, I wonder what the drop in Chinese dog food and drywall has been?

If the public had truly understood the magnitude of this disaster, the result might have been to ban all foreign manufacture of drugs. Perhaps when the full extent of the disaster is known because of the hundreds and hundreds of wrongful death cases still pending, the experts such as JZ Med will have to redo their numbers. We can only hope that the Civil Justice System can do more to protect us than Wall Street and the FDA has done.

The market for APIs from China last year dipped 3 percent, to be worth $31 billion, said FiercePharma, based on the report from JZ Med. http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/chinas-api-exports-hurt-quality-issues/2010-02-22

Chinese API exports declined by 8 percent, to about $16 billion last year. JZ Med believes these numbers declined because of quality control disasters like the 2008 recall of the blood thinner heparin from China, which was contaminated and was blamed four countless deaths. The world’s economic woes have also cut the demand for Chinese APIs. See http://heparin-law.com

JZ Med argues, and we are not necessarily buying into this, that drip in demand has made some API manufacturers to improve their quality control to be more in line with the standards in place in the United States and Europe.

This year the market for APIs will increase 5 percent to 8 percent, according to JZ Med, to $33 billion. Following that, the API growth should see larger annual increases, to 15 percent, or $65 billion, by 2015, the consultant said.

Please, Big Pharma: If I am sick and need something put directly into my veins so that I don’t die during a procedure, can you please make sure it comes from a facility that the FDA has inspected? The only way to really make sure is to have that facility to be directly under the FDA’s jurisdiction. In other words, in the USA.