Partnership for Safe Medicines Issues Statements on Series of Drug Safety Hearings
Recently, the heparin contamination and drug safety in general have taken center stage on Capitol Hill. In the past two weeks, there has been three hearings in the House and one in the Senate examining issues affecting the safety of our prescription medicines.
As part of our commitment to protecting consumers from counterfeit and contraband medicines, the Partnership issued statements to the media and Congress for each hearing about the government’s role in drug safety and suggestions for protecting Americans moving forward.
Although I applaud the members of Congress who initiated these hearings, their findings shouldn’t come as a surprise. Here at the Partnership for Safe Medicines, we have been saying for months that the FDA’s ability to safeguard America’s food and drug supplies is being compromised by numerous challenges and obstacles.
In our statements, we reiterated our call for strict, rigorous regulatory oversight of imported drugs to keep situations such as the recent heparin contamination from repeating in the future. But more importantly, progress in the fight against counterfeit and contaminated medications is unforeseeable unless we give the FDA all the tools it truly needs to fix the problems.
These hearings were a step in the right direction. But we can’t stop there. It’s essential that Congress and the FDA view the ideas and legislation coming out of these hearings as the beginning of drug safety efforts in our country, not the end.
While the government works to develop a plan to protect Americans, it’s more important than ever before that everyone learns how they can take steps to protect themselves from contraband and potentially counterfeit medicines—because counterfeit drugs are unsafe at any cost. Visit SafeMedicines.org and join us in our stand against counterfeit drugs.