Statement: I don’t want medicines from China

The carcinogen ‘NMDA’ had ended up in these valsartan products at the factory in China. It is a very small amount, but of course it does not belong in a blood pressure medicine. A total of 150,000 Dutch people use one of the contaminated valsartan products. It concerns various valsartan boxes of the brands Sandoz, Ratiopharm, Centrapharm and Aurobindo. The contaminated products have been dispensed by pharmacies since 2012.

Made in China

Valsartan is not the only drug to come from China. Most of our medicines are made in China and India. This is not stated on the box or in the package leaflet. So you cannot opt ​​for European products, for example. On the other hand, it is not surprising that medicines are increasingly coming from China or India. This is where the cheapest suppliers of medicines and raw materials are located. If the medicines came from Europe or America, we had to pay more health insurance premiums.

Control sometimes goes wrong

According to the Inspectorate, the quality of medicines is high in the Netherlands, despite the fact that a large part of the production takes place outside Europe. Thanks to good control, our medicines are therefore usually safe, according to the inspection.

Unfortunately, sometimes things go wrong with the control of those Chinese and Indian medicines. In 2008, 81 Americans died after using contaminated heparin from China. A few years later things went wrong with products from the Indian producer Ranbaxy. The medicines and raw materials were withdrawn from the Dutch market in 2014 because they turned out to be of poor quality. In the spring of 2018, Zemlya showed that Indian producer Aurobindo is exploiting workers and polluting the environment.

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Want to read more about the contaminated valsartan? The Inspectorate has a question/answer overview on its website.