US health regulators are watching for potential drug shortages after India restricted the export of some raw pharmaceutical ingredients, a move that could disrupt the industry’s globe-spanning supply chain.
India on Tuesday said that it would limit exports of some common medicines as concerns grow over shortages of chemical ingredients.
Many manufacturers of those ingredients in China are shut or making less medicine than usual due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Photo: Reuters
The drugs include over-the-counter painkiller and fever reducer paracetamol and finished pills that include it.
Similar restrictions have been placed on the common antibiotic metronidazole, various versions of vitamin B and eight other medicinal chemicals, a notice from the Indian government said.
“India has restricted the export of 26 active pharmaceutical ingredients for export, which represents about 10 percent of their export capacity,” US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn told the US Congress at a hearing in Washington on Tuesday.
“We’re working very closely to look at that list to determine how that will affect the medical supply chain,” Hahn said.
So far, the FDA has only identified one drug that has gone into short supply because of coronavirus-related supply chain issues, although it has contacted 180 manufacturers.
Hahn declined to identify the drug, and said that alternatives are available.
Although India is the source of about 20 percent of the world’s generic-drug supply, the country relies on China for about 66 percent of the chemical components needed to make them.
A recent analysis by the Indian government found that as many as 450 drug ingredients could be affected by China’s virus containment efforts, which include a complete lockdown of Hubei Province, a center of the country’s drug industry.
The FDA has long grappled with drug shortages as drugmakers consolidated, shifted production overseas, and curtailed sales of unprofitable medicines.
Global health experts have encouraged US drugmakers to diversify their sources of pharmaceutical materials to avoid overdependence on any given country.
However, even diversification might not be a safeguard, said Yanzhong Huang (黃嚴忠), a senior fellow for global health at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.
“Manufacturing pharmaceuticals nowadays is so globalized and this is a worldwide pandemic,” Huang said. “This is the first time we’re facing a convergence of factors like this.”
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