China to ban sale of non-prescription antibiotics ( 2003-12-24 09:21) (Xinhua) The State Food and Drug
Administration (SFDA), China's drug watchdog, announced Tuesday that starting on
July 1, 2004, nobody may buy antibiotics not in the official OTC catalog without
a doctor's prescription.
Shao Mingli, deputy director of the SFDA, told a meeting here on the rational
use of antibiotics that China will tighten controland monitoring of the use of
antibiotics nationwide, stamping out the production of antibiotics that are
beneath local standards andhave serious side-effects, and banning the
advertising of antibiotics in the public media.
China used to have lax control over antibiotics. A SFDA survey showed that
reports of side-effects from using antibiotics accounted for nearly 50 percent
of the total side-effect reports, leading other kinds of drugs both in number of
cases and degrees of severeness.
Shao said that many of the 20 million people with hearing disabilities in
China are suffering because of the irrational use of antibiotics.
In the 1960s and 1970s, nationwide abuse of acheomycin resultedin damage to
the teeth of a generation of Chinese people.
Shao said that abuse of antibiotics has led to increasingly drug-resistant
bacteria, and some antibiotics have lost their effect altogerther.
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