Investigation of expiry date of some pharmaceutical products circulating in the market
- Author:
Ha Thi Song Nguyen
- Publication Type:Journal Article
- Keywords:
drug
- MeSH:
Pharmaceutical Preparations;
Health Care Sector
- From:Pharmaceutical Journal
1998;272(12):19-21
- CountryViet Nam
- Language:Vietnamese
-
Abstract:
The objectives of this study were to 1) compare shelf lives of imported versus domestically produced drugs, both as filed with the Drug Administration of Vietnam and as recorded on the drug labels in the market; and 2) review the compliance with expiry dates in 30 selected pharmacies in Hanoi. This retrospective study included 3480 imported and 4519 local drugs in the register files together survey of 1069 local and 1089 imported drugs in private pharmacies in Hanoi. The results showed that 1) frequency of local drugs expiry date in register files was higher than those in real market (97.32% vs. 88.44%, respectively) and 2) the imported drugs on the average have a shelf life twice as long as domestically produced ones. There were still an average of 2.18% of the above mentioned drugs list found in the pharmacies that was out of shelf life. The findings suggest that domestic producers tend to indicate shelf lives that are significantly shorter than those of the foreign manufacturers, and that there may be a need for more close supervision of the regulations concerning shelf life of pharmaceutical products at the pharmaceutical sector.
