BEIJING -- China's National HealthCommission (NHC) will improve its mediation among different sectors to ensure sufficientsupply of essential medicines, said a senior health official Tuesday.TheNHC will try to monitor the market more closely, increase the supply of bulkdrug substance and regulate the pricing, said Zeng Yixin, vice minister of theNHC, at a press conference.

"Lastyear we saw the shortage of some medicines but only temporarily orregionally," Zeng said. "The shortage was mostly caused by thestructural imbalance between the supply and demand, the monopoly of certainbulk drug substance or inefficient distribution."

Thehealth department will play a better part in coordinating among pharmaceuticalfirms, drug stores, hospitals and other regulatory agencies, he said.

Thegovernment adopted a number of policies to ensure the supply of essentialmedicines in 2018. Pharmaceutical firms were required to report the medicinesthey no longer produced, while a state catalog for medicines in short supplywas established.

Governmentregulators also stepped up the crackdown on malpractice in the pharmaceutical market.In January, two pharmaceutical firms were fined 12.43 million yuan (1.85million US dollars) for monopolizing the supply of a bulk substance widely usedin flu medicines.

Source:https://enapp.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/16/AP5cb5ed32a3104dbcdfaa6643.html