US FDA trains China's exporting drugmakers

The US Food and Drug Administration has teamed up with its Chinese counterpart, the State Food and Drug Administration, to offer a three-day seminar on the US agency's Good Manufacturing Practice for drugs exported to the USA. The training sessions were held at Beijing University and are designed to assist some of the 4,000 pharmaceutical companies that meet China's 1998 GMP regulations but aim to meet the more up-to-date US standards.

Bian Zhenjia, the SFDA's director of the department of Drug Safety and Inspection, told the government newspaper the China Daily: "we have already begun to revise [the GMP], not only to ensure the quality and effectiveness of our medicines, also with the hope of sharpening the international competitiveness of domestic pharmaceutical companies to eventually win international recognition."