On February 29, the Quality Brands Protection Committee of China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment (QBPC) Pharmaceutical & Medical Devices Industry Working Group (P&MD IWG) held an IWG lunch meeting, and 9 enterprise representatives attended the event both online and offline. Before the meeting, the enterprise representatives visited the Counterfeit Medicine Showroom of the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control (China) in Beijing. Mr. Cao Guoying, Director of Beijing Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Development Foundation, introduced the samples of counterfeit medicines from all over the country in the past 30 years, the role of authenticity identification technology in previous major public health events, and the application of authenticity detection equipment in current law enforcement practices at home and abroad. The representatives learned of hard work of several generations of drug regulators and realized that fighting against the crime of counterfeit and inferior drugs was a formidable and long-lasting task.
At the lunch meeting, Lance Lu first reported the activities of IWG in January and February, shared the discussion on drug and medical device safety governance on JD.com Co-construction Cooperation Forum on Commodity Security,and encouraged the participants to participate in future activities.
Subsequently, Felix Zhang, the representative of Novartis, briefed on a drug-related case cracked by the Economic Crime Investigation Department of Shanghai Public Security Bureau. Furthermore, the participants discussed in depth the pattern of determining drugs involved in several recent cases related to counterfeiting overseas generic drugs, and reminded the participants to sort out and collect the data of indicators and characteristics, which play a key role in the manufacturing of critical products, in order to provide a professional basis for drug-related determination in future cases.
Finally, Customs Committee Vice Chair Daisy Ge explained the priorities of the Customs National Targeting Bureau (Sea Cargo) of the General Administration of Customs of China (GACC) (Shanghai) and the Customs National Targeting Bureau (Sea Cargo) of GACC (Qingdao), especially those related to the import, export and cross-border sales of drugs and medical devices. Internet Committee Vice Chair Jerry Yang from Alliance Pharma introduced the project - Social Media Public Relations Event Response Workshop and discussed several key topics concerning public medication safety. All participants indicated their support for the above two projects and further deepening the cooperation with the Customs Committee and the Internet Committee.
