Good Distribution Practices News

On 17 March 2021, the Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/457 was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. It amends the Delegated Regulation 2016/161 regarding an exemption from the obligation for wholesalers to decommission the unique identifier (UI) of medicinal products exported to the UK.

The Higher Regional Court (OLG) of Hamburg has decided, in the context of proceedings aimed at the issuance of an interim injunction against a wholesaler, that medical cannabis (cannabis flowers) is not (yet) a medicinal product at the wholesale level.

The European Anti-Fraud Office (Office européen de lutte antifraude - OLAF) has warned governments from dubious offers to provide them with COVID-19 vaccines.

Wholesalers must ensure that their Quality Management Systems (QMS) is aligned with the GDP requirements. Otherwise, this can lead to a GDP Non-Compliance Report, as a recent example entered into the EudraGMDP database by the Romanian authority shows.

In October 2020, the ECA Academy offered the Live Online Training "The GDP Compliance Manager". During the Q&A sessions, many interesting questions were posed to the speakers' team. The ECA would like to share a selection of these Q&As sorted by topic. Part 1 deals with questions related to GDP training.

With the approvals of various COVID-19 vaccines in many countries, the question arises how to safely transport the serum from the production sites to the storage and distribution centres and then on to the local vaccination centres. However, this question does not only arise for COVID-19 vaccines, but also any other temperature-sensitive product in general. The EU GDP-Guidelines contain some specific requirements for temperature-sensitive products in this regard.

The competent authority of Germany has entered a new GPD Non-Compliance Report into the EudraGMDP database due to the discovery of serious GDP non-compliance at a German wholesale distributor.