GMP News - Counterfeit Medicines

In the follow-up to the pandemic situation, the FDA is still reviewing the manufacture and importation of hand sanitizers and identifying potentially critical hand sanitizers. This is shown by the warning letter issued to Guangzhou Orchard Aromatherapy & Skin Care Co.

The European Commission published a new version of the Questions & Answers (Q&As) regarding the safety features for medicinal products for human use. Is it allowed to verify the authenticity of the UI when the product is not in physical possession?

The FDA has issued a questions and answers document to assist industry and State and local governments in understanding the effects of the Uniform National Policy on drug product tracing.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a revised draft guidance entitled Verification Systems Under the Drug Supply Chain Security Act for Certain Prescription Drugs. This document addresses the verification systems that manufacturers, repackagers, wholesale distributors, and dispensers must have in place.

In order to ensure that medicinal products continue to be marketed with a unique identifier (UI) in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Ireland and Malta, the Commission further extends the temporary derogation from the requirement to decommission UIs of products exported to UK.

On 13 August 2021, the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) held a webinar "Protecting the medicines supply chain from falsified medicines". A link to the recording and updated information addressing some key questions received during this webinar have now been published on the MHRA Inspectorate blog.

Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/161 is adapted with regard to Article 47 (Evaluation of notifications by national competent authorities to the Commission) and Annex I (List of medicinal products that shall not bear the safety features).