中國因反對聲音強烈而禁止政府向民眾提供藥品數據

Recently the New York Times reported the following:

In China, Government Data on Drugs Blocked from Public After Backlash

Criticism over how the Chinese government buys drugs for its public health care system has ignited frustration over the quality of medicine.

The New York Times - By Alexandra Stevenson and Zixu Wang

Reporting from Hong Kong

Jan. 27, 2025, 5:51 a.m. ET

When a group of prominent Chinese doctors publicly raised worries last week about the quality of domestic drugs, China’s government sent officials to investigate.

But now data about the drugs that appeared on a government website as recently as Friday is no longer publicly available. A social media post from a doctor who scrutinized the data has been taken down.

The criticism in China over how the government buys drugs for its public health care system, which most people use, has ignited frustration over the most basic of concerns: the effectiveness of medicine.

Two separate groups of medical experts and political advisers in Shanghai and Beijing are sounding the alarm over the country’s centralized drug procurement system and the drugs on a list of medications for public hospitals.

The drugs at issue are almost entirely generic versions of drugs that had been largely imported in the past. Among the products doctors are questioning include anesthesia they said often fails to put patients to sleep and stroke medication that has failed to prevent strokes. Even some of the most basic drugs, like laxatives, seem to be ineffective, the doctors have said.

The scrutiny is focusing attention on a campaign by Beijing to reduce costs in its national public health care system, which is coming under increasing financial pressures as the population ages.

The centralized drug system, known as volume-based procurement, has saved the government tens of billions of dollars. But the cost cutting could now come at the expense of drug effectiveness, said Zheng Minhua, the director of surgery at Ruijin Hospital.

Mr. Zheng was one of more than 20 doctors who proposed that the government allow patients access to brand-name drugs even if they are not on the government list.

Another doctor and political adviser in Beijing submitted his own proposal last week calling for similar changes. On Chinese social media, doctors and patients shared their frustrations about domestic drugs and complained about how difficult it was to get the original versions.

Amid the outcry last week, some experts began to dig into public data showing how the generic drugs stacked up against their originals. One doctor and former editor at a popular online health platform, Xia Zhimin, noticed that the data provided by different drugmakers was so similar they had to be fraudulent.

The National Medical Products Administration, which approves generic drugs and published the data, acknowledged the similarities and said they were caused by “editing errors” related to specific years of publication. But that did little to assuage concerns and instead elicited criticism on Chinese social media that a simple apology was not enough.

Then the agency removed the data from its platform and China’s internet censors scrubbed Dr. Xia’s analysis of the data from his WeChat account.

Over the weekend, an article in the state-owned China News Weekly quoted experts calling on the agency to make more data available rather than less. It also raised questions on over whether the staff at the agency might have known the data was plagiarized by did not speak up.

“A good pharmaceutical quality control system requires adequate information disclosure and transparency,” the article said.

Translation

中國因反對聲音強烈而禁止政府向民眾提供藥品數據

中國政府為其公共醫療體系採購藥品的方式受到批評，引發了人們對藥品品質的不滿。

上週，當一群著名中國醫生公開對國產藥品品質表示擔憂時，中國政府派出官員進行調查。

但現在，最遲於上週五, 政府網站上出現的有關藥物的數據已不再向公眾開放。一位仔細研究過該數據的醫生在社交媒體上發佈的貼文已被刪除。

中國政府為大多數人使用的公共醫療體系採購藥品的方式受到批評，這引發了人們對最基本問題的擔憂：藥品的有效性。

上海和北京的兩個不同的醫療專家小組和政治顧問小組對國家的集中藥品採購系統, 和公立醫院藥品清單上的藥品發出了警告。

涉的藥品幾乎都是過去大量進口藥品的仿製藥。醫生質疑的藥品包括麻醉藥被他們認為經常無法令病人麻醉和中風藥無法預防中風。醫生表示，即使是一些最基本的藥物，如瀉藥，似乎也無效。

這次審查的焦點是北京因隨著人口老化，財政壓力越來越大而要降低國家公共醫療體系成本而採取的行動。

集中藥品制度，即所謂大規模採購，為政府節省了數百億美元。但瑞金醫院外科主任Zheng Minhua表示，削減成本現在可能會以犧牲藥物療效為代價。

Zheng 先生是20多名醫生之一，他們提議政府允許病人使用品牌藥，即使這些藥物不在政府名單上。

北京的另一位醫生兼政治顧問上週也提交了自己的提議，呼籲進行類似的改革。在中國社群媒體上，醫生和病人分享了他們對國產藥品的不滿，並抱怨要取得正版藥品有多麼困難。

在上週的強烈抗議中，一些專家開始深入研究公開數據，以了解仿製藥與原廠藥的比較情況。Xia Zhimin 是曾任熱門線上健康平台編輯的一位醫生，他發現不同製藥商提供的數據非常相似，必定是造假。

負責批准仿製藥並發布數據的國家藥品管理局承認了這些相似之處，並表示這些相似之處是由於特定某年份出版的「編輯錯誤」所造成的。但這無助於緩解人們的擔憂，反而引發中國社群媒體的批評，表示簡單的道歉是不夠的。

隨後，該機構從其平台上刪除了這些數據，中國的網路審查人員也從Xia醫生的微信帳戶上刪除了他對這些數據的分析。

上週末，國營媒體《中國新聞周刊》的一篇文章引述專家的話，呼籲該機構公開更多數據，而不是更少。這也引發了人們的疑問：該機構的工作人員是否知道資料是抄襲的，但卻沒有說出來。

文章稱： “良好的藥品品質控制系統需要充分的資訊揭露和透明度。”

              So, a group of prominent Chinese doctors have publicly raised worries about the quality of domestic drugs. The drugs at issue are almost entirely generic versions of drugs. Among the products, doctors say that anesthesia often fails to put patients to sleep and stroke medication fails to prevent strokes. Some doctors have said that even some of the most basic drugs, like laxatives, seem to be ineffective. I am shocked by the complaints raised by the doctors.