Vulnerabilities or disruptions to the global medicine supply chain (including drug shortages) continue to make headlines.
Standards play an important role in the global medicines supply chain, helping governments and manufacturers increase the availability of safe, quality medicines, as well as building patient and health provider trust. In fact, quality standards are a big reason why we in the U.S. can get a prescription filled at our neighborhood pharmacy and trust that the medicine we receive will be safe and work as it should.
Drug shortages pose a significant, ongoing threat to our healthcare system and to the patients who rely on medicine for their wellbeing and survival.
In April, the World Health Organization (WHO) became the latest health authority to release a draft guidance on Current Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMP) considerations for the prevention and management of nitrosamine contamination in pharmaceutical products.
In this Q&A with the Duke-Margolis Drug Supply Chain Resilience and Advanced Manufacturing Consortium, US Pharmacopeia (USP) policy expert Amy B. Cadwallader highlights the importance of multi-disciplinary, cross-functional coordination to strengthen the medicine supply chain and global public health resilience in the face of ongoing threats, like persistent drug shortages. This Q&A was first published in the Consortium's eNewsletter and is re-printed with the permission of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy.
Patient access to cancer drugs can mean the difference between life and death. Persistent shortages threaten patients’ access to the lifesaving and life-sustaining therapies they need.
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