Growing Reliance on China for Medicines: A Role for Pharmacists in Assuring Quality

The U.S. health care system is becoming increasingly dependent on China for medicines because it is the dominant world supplier of the ingredients needed to make thousands of medicines distributed to hospitals, pharmacies, and military hospitals. The United States is so dependent that if China stopped supplying ingredients, pharmacy shelves would be empty within months. The Food and Drug Administration is in the unenviable position of making tradeoffs between assuring high standards that Americans have come to expect and preventing drug shortages.