BPOM

Indonesian medicine regulation: doing well compared with the Mighty FDA

In the USA, the quality of generic drugs is in the headlines again following a recent report by investigative journalists at ProPublica. They tested a total of 11 samples spread over three active ingredients, and found that two did not meet quality standards. In reporting their results, they gave figures for the amount of active quality surveillance conducted by the Mighty FDA. In a country with close to 350 million people, a country that spends over US$12,000 a year per…


Medicine chain gang

Good Distribution Practice in rural Indonesia. Photo: Elizabeth Pisani Getting medicines to patients across Indonesia’s 13,000 islands: what could possibly go wrong? Let’s start with an apology for a silence which some of you have been kind enough to point out has been going on muuuuuuch too long. It turns out that pandemics are busy times for people whose day job is in infectious disease epidemiology. They also keep one away from loved-ones, including Bad Boyfriends. This is the longest…