Percent of Imported Pharmaceutical Ingredients Apparently Unchanged in 20 Years
According to the FDA, in 2017, 80% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients used to make our medicines are imported. I can’t remember how many times I’ve read (and written) that over the past decade or so. Almost every time I read that particular statistic in the news, it’s often a story about drug quality problems, in which foreign APIs are reported as a growing problem. Flashback to the FDA in 1998: as reported by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients used to make medicines for sale in the U.S. is about 80%.
In March 2019, Anna Edney, from Bloomberg News, wrote an article called: “Tainted Pills Force FDA to Tighten Drug-Safety Regulations.” The main focus of the article is that there are drug quality problems caused by APIs that are not meeting the required standards.
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