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17 pharmaceutical companies in E. Java do not meet int'l standards
Seventeen out of 38 pharmaceutical companies in East Java have not yet implemented internationally standardized drug manufacturing procedures, triggering worries that locally manufactured medicines will lag behind from the ones produced by other countries in the competitive free market after the implementation of ASEAN Economic Community in 2015, a report has said
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eventeen out of 38 pharmaceutical companies in East Java have not yet implemented internationally standardized drug manufacturing procedures, triggering worries that locally manufactured medicines will lag behind from the ones produced by other countries in the competitive free market after the implementation of ASEAN Economic Community in 2015, a report has said.
Paulus Totok Lucida, the chairman of the East Java-chapter of the Indonesian Pharmaceutical Association, said the 17 pharmaceutical companies in the province were local medium-level industrial companies with start-up capital of less than Rp 20 billion (US$2 million).
He said pharmaceutical companies that had implemented international standards for drug manufacturing were mostly foreign investment companies.
'The pharmaceutical industry is required to meet international good product manufacturing standards. These global standards are needed so that local products can be marketed abroad,' said Paulus.
He further explained that to produce products with international standards, it took around Rp 5 billion to carry out the internationally-standardized drug manufacturing processes. Many domestic investment companies could not afford to pay for additional drug production processes so that their products could be accepted by international markets.
'For example, every drug must be free from containing air. The international standards apply a tight procedure to ensure that a medicine is 100 percent free of air. To reach that level, it needs an equipment investment worth more than Rp 2 billion,' said Paulus.
He said although they had not yet fulfilled international standards, it did not mean that medicines produced by the 17 pharmaceutical companies in East Java were dangerous and unusable.
'Their products are mostly capsules and pills and they have passed the quality control procedures of the health agencies and the Drug and Food Monitoring Agency (BPOM), meaning that they are legal and safe to be distributed. However, those products cannot be distributed abroad,' said Paulus. (ebf)
