PFP duo wants Chinese on drug labels

In response to recent medical blunders in Taipei and Pingtung, PFP legislators proposed yesterday that all drug bottles be labelled in Chinese.

In the foul-ups, a nurse and a pharmacist allegedly administered the wrong vaccine and medicine because they failed to understand the English labelling on the containers.

"These medical errors revealed Taiwan's medical education has serious problems," PFP Legislator Kao Ming-chien (高明見) said at a press conference.

"The mistakes committed by the nurse and the pharmacist showed their most basic training was flawed," Kao said.

Kao and two PFP lawmakers, Shen Chih-hwei (沈智慧) and Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄), proposed changes to the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law (藥事法).

"We demand Chinese on all medicine," Shen said.

According to Liu, Chinese instructions are included on the cardboard packaging of domestic and imported medicines.

"However, only some of the inner drug containers [usually plastic bottles] have Chinese writing. Sometimes nurses or pharmacists get confused over the English on the inner containers," Liu said.

Shen said the PFP legislative caucus will put forward a proposal to amend law to apply Chinese labelling to all inside packaging.

However, the Department of Health's Bureau of Pharmaceutical Affairs Director-General Wang Hui-po (王惠珀) said it would be difficult to implement the plan.

"For example, all bottles of imported medicine are tightly sealed. It would be difficult to open all the seals to attach Chinese instructions," Wang said.

"Moreover, some drug bottles are tiny and English covers the entire bottle. There is no space left for Chinese," he added.

"What I worry most is that if we attach Chinese labels to all imported medicines, we may cause another tide of confusion," Wang said.

According to Wang, if the change is implemented, there would be two types of bottles of the same drug circulating in the market.

"The drugs imported earlier would only have only English labels, whereas those imported after the implementation of the law would have both English and Chinese," Wang said.

He said the real cause of the recent mistakes was not the English labelling of containers, but the lack of proper training for medical professionals.