Blog 8 Drug Manufacturers

There are now morphine cartridges that will contain up to twice the labeled dose, then regular due to the lack of safety in the manufacturing business. Manufacturing plants have been slacking off lately and will proceed to use rusty tools, mold in production areas and will omit the rule of sanitation not caring about the safety of others. The last couple of years, the major manufacturers of sterile injectable drugs, which are generally inspected federal government, have been warned by the food and drug administration about violating several of the regulation guidelines.  Several factories are being shut down due to this problem, or their production is quite slow due to the fixing of these problems.  There have been countless numbers of health scares recently in the pharmacies and they all trace these problems back to the main manufacturers. There has been a report saying that about 19 people had died from meningitis in an outbreak due to the New England Compounding Center in Massachusetts. Supplies of a steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, had become short because Teva and Sandoz stopped producing it. Manufacturers do note that there are sterile drugs that are being made such as products like chemotherapy drugs and anti-seizure drugs like diazepam.  These are sold in the United States and are so far safe, with a large quantity as well. Since around 2009, regulators have discovered the failures in quality control at plants in areas such as North Carolina, California and Costa Rica.  This was the leading cause to several recalls of products - diverse as broken infusion pumps to overfilled morphine vials. A company in Rocky Mount North Carolina had to slow down their production and they were one of the largest manufacturers.  That being said they also experienced the most recalls and problems.

            I believe that the FDA should be looking at drug manufacturers regularly because we are the ones that end up taking the drugs, which they make, and they should be safe.  We should not have to worry whether the medicine we take to relieve us is safe or not.  These companies don’t follow the FDA regulations and are not sanitary because they believe it will slow down their production.  But in fact if they do keep their manufacturing business clean more pharmacies will purchase the drugs from them because they would have passed the FDA inspections, unlike the other manufacturers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/business/drug-makers-stalled-in-a-cycle-of-quality-lapses-and-shortages.html?ref=health&_r=0