Recent legal developments and the authority of the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration

Recent legal developments have highlighted the need for greater support from the Federal Government for the authority of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to ensure, by pre-approval assessments and post-approval regulation, the safety of listed medicines in Australia. One of these developments concerns the impact of ongoing civil litigation in Australian courts led by Pan Pharmaceuticals stakeholders to recover compensation from the government for the losses they incurred following the TGA's post-listing shut-down of that pharmaceutical manufacturing company in 2003. Another factor is the recently announced governmental policy to outsource to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) safety assessments of foreign drug manufacturers whose products will be used in Australia.