The Legislative Yuan yesterday passed an amendment to the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act (藥事法), which includes increased punishments for manufacturing or importing counterfeit or banned drugs.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that the amendment aims to increase the liability of pharmaceutical companies and establish a tracing mechanism to report drug shortages, as well as improving drug use instructions to better inform the patients, while creating a mechanism for emergency manufacturing or imports of drugs and better drug source management.
Before the amendment, pharmaceutical companies or people who produced or imported counterfeit or banned drugs faced a maximum fine of NT$10 million (US$303,260) and a maximum jail term of 10 years.
The amendment increased the maximum fine to NT$100 million, but it can climb as high as NT$200 million if the drugs cause any deaths, while prison terms remain unchanged.
As for drugs that fail to meet standards imposed by authorities, the companies that manufacture or import them are to face fines ranging between NT$100,000 and NT$5 million — a significant rise from the previously enforced fines ranging between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000 — as well as the confiscation of any illegal gains from sale of the drugs.
Moreover, if pharmaceutical companies find it difficult to continue supplying necessary drugs designated by the government for any reason, they are to report to the authorities within six months, or at least 30 days if the supply interruption is caused by a natural disaster or accident.
Regarding an article of the amendment that requires the clarification of drug use instructions for easier understanding, the Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation urged the FDA to set a schedule for enforcing a reform of drug package labeling and instructions, saying the reform should begin with over-the-counter drugs.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching