Drug and food testing: Difficult in many ways!

The drug testing system in Vietnam currently only tests and verifies more than 500 active ingredients, or half of the active ingredients circulating on the market. Food testing is no better as the capacity of testing centers is limited and procedures are complicated. Removing difficulties, investing in and upgrading the drug and food testing system is something that cannot be delayed any longer.

Prolonged hardship

According to MSc. Nguyen Thi Truc Van, Deputy Head of the General Planning Department, Ho Chi Minh City Drug Testing Institute, in recent years, the number of drug samples tested for services has increased significantly, from 1,695 samples in 2022 to 2,359 samples in 2024. The number of fake drug samples detected has also increased each year (5 fake drug samples in 2022, 12 fake drug samples in 2023 and up to 40 samples in 2024).

In addition, there are also cases of drugs not meeting the standards registered with state management agencies. The source of testing samples comes from many channels such as police agencies, provincial testing centers, hospitals and people.

Despite its effective operations, the Ho Chi Minh City Drug Testing Institute faces many difficulties in collecting samples for testing. MSc. Nguyen Thi Truc Van explained that the institute's staff do not have the same functions and powers as quality controllers, so they are often refused by facilities when requesting samples.

“Uncooperative establishments will find every excuse to refuse, such as the absence of authorized personnel, inability to issue invoices, refusal to sign records, and refusal to accept payment immediately after sampling. And in fact, we do not have the authority to handle this,” said Ms. Nguyen Thi Truc Van.

The concern is that, although the risk of counterfeit drugs from online trading is always present, there are currently no clear regulations and guidelines for sampling on e-commerce platforms. As a result, specialized agencies encounter difficulties in sealing and making records in accordance with the sampling and testing process. In addition, some standard substances used in drug testing are often not available, have very high prices, and lack reliable suppliers, especially for drugs on the special control list. Based on the above reality, the Ho Chi Minh City Drug Testing Institute recommends that a mechanism be established to resolve difficulties in sampling, helping the management and monitoring tools for counterfeit drugs on the market achieve the necessary effectiveness.

Recognizing the difficulties in drug testing, Dr. Nguyen Hoai Nam, Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health , said that currently the number of drugs sampled for quality testing is not commensurate with the number of drugs registered for circulation. The city's drug quality monitoring work is also facing difficulties because purchasing drug samples for testing requires invoices and documents at the sampling location, making it very difficult to detect counterfeit drugs.

Many samples of poor quality drugs have been discovered by the Ho Chi Minh City Drug Testing Institute recently.

Monitoring the quality of drugs circulating outside the official distribution system (online trading, personal transactions) is still limited due to the lack of appropriate management tools. In addition, there is currently no legal mechanism to support rapid on-site verification of suspected counterfeit drugs, making it difficult to monitor the quality of drugs in circulation.

Invest in testing systems

Many businesses have reported that in order to have legally valid test results, it is mandatory to have a purchase invoice or sample record. This regulation can cause difficulties when authorities suddenly inspect food establishments that violate the law. Meanwhile, the testing costs are very high, the payment process is complicated, and in many cases there is no basis for the budget to pay.

A representative of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Food Safety shared that the facilities designated to conduct testing for state management of food safety have not yet fully met the testing criteria for food products, especially milk and health protection foods. In addition, the reality shows that for some types of fresh food with a short shelf life, if we wait until the test results are available, the food has expired or spoiled. This causes difficulties for both businesses and authorities. According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Food Safety, many interdisciplinary inspection programs, sampling, in-depth analysis or community communication support are not regular and continuous.

The Vietnamese pharmaceutical market currently has more than 23,000 drugs and more than 1,000 active ingredients licensed for circulation. However, the national drug testing system only tests and verifies more than 500 active ingredients, accounting for about 50% of the active ingredients in circulation. Each year, units take about 40,000 samples of circulating drugs for testing and monitoring and have discovered substandard drug samples. Dr. Ta Manh Hung, Deputy Director of the Department of Drug Administration, Ministry of Health , acknowledged that with the current scale of the pharmaceutical market, taking 40,000 drug samples for testing each year is not much.

In the context of deep integration and strong e-commerce development, Vietnam is facing the risk of increasing counterfeit drugs from abroad, spreading through online channels, especially on social networks and cross-border e-commerce platforms.

Dr. Ta Manh Hung affirmed that the Ministry of Health will increase investment in testing systems, communication to warn the community, as well as strengthen coordination between relevant ministries, branches, local authorities and legitimate businesses to improve the effectiveness of preventing counterfeit drugs.

Currently, the Ministry of Health is developing a project to plan the State testing system according to a 2-level model: central and local with 34 provincial testing centers. This model will create the foundation for building a modern, professional, synchronous testing system capable of detecting and controlling counterfeit and poor quality drugs to ensure public health safety.

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Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/kiem-nghiem-thuoc-va-thuc-pham-kho-du-duong-post810904.html