China issues five-year plans on food and drug safety

China's Food and Drug Administration has announced that two five-year plans (2016-2020) on food and drug safety were issued by the State Council on February 21.

As far as pharmaceuticals are concerned, the plan on drug safety outlines that by 2020 the quality of drugs should be further improved, the standard of medical equipment will be raised and the level of supervision will be enhanced.

Specifically, by 2020, the plan requires the quality consistency evaluation for 289 generic drugs approved by catalog of China's basic drugs should be completed, 3,050 national drug standards and 500 medical equipment standards revised, the updated rate of periodic drug safety report will reach 100% and the license holding rate for pharmaceutical practitioners will be over 0.04%.