The Ministry of Health and Welfare will not ask pharmacies and hospitals to refund National Health Insurance (NHI) medical claims for prescribing anti-cholesterol drugs that turned out to be counterfeit, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said on Wednesday.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has confirmed that counterfeit drugs were sold in packages similar to those of Crestor, one of the most widely prescribed cholesterol drugs in the nation.
The counterfeit drugs were found mixed with two batches of Crestor — batch numbers MV503 and MK479 — it said.
Preliminary analysis found that the counterfeit drugs contained atorvastatin, a type of legal lipid-lowering agent, rather than rosuvastatin used in Crestor, the FDA said, adding that on Tuesday it asked the drugmaker AstraZeneca to recall all batches of the product.
National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) official Shen Mao-ting (沈茂庭) has sparked controversy by saying that the agency would consider asking for refunds of medical claims that pharmacies and hospitals made when they prescribed the counterfeit drugs.
When asked to comment on the issue at an International Women’s Day event in Taipei, Chen said that AstraZeneca has agreed to recall and replace all batches of the product so there are no losses and the NHIA will not ask pharmacies and hospitals to refund their costs.
He also said the FDA did not delay the investigation into the counterfeit drugs as some media reports have suggested, because it immediately examined the alleged fake drugs on Friday last week, the day after it received the report.
The ministry will enhance the management of the sourcing and distribution of drugs, and increase the rewards offered to people reporting counterfeit drugs, Chen said.
In related news, the Taipei City Department of Health announced that it has asked AstraZeneca to report the numbers of recalled Crestor 10mg film-coated tablets on a daily basis and urged pharmacies to report the source of the counterfeit drugs that they purchased before returning them to AstraZeneca.
The department said it also received a report about Crestor drugs with the batch number MV479 sold at a pharmacy in the city, but investigators only found eight boxes of the drug with the batch number MV503 and collected them for examination.
The department said that people who have questions about the drugs that they had purchased should take them to the pharmacy or hospital where they bought them for consultation or replacement.
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