Changing The Pharma Playing Field In Japan

On a dreary, hot and humid day during the last week of August, TV cameras rolled outside the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare (Koseisho) while 90 people from the prosecutor's office entered the building to remove files related to the approval of blood products during the mid-1980s. Unbelievably, and for the first time in history, a government ministry was raided.

Radical Reform Of The Approval System Two days earlier, the Koseisho announced a sweeping reorganization of its Pharmaceutical Affairs Bureau (Marketletters September 2 and 9), effectively disbanding its functions of drug approval, safety of drugs and promotion of the pharmaceutical industry.

The AIDS scandal precipitated this long overdue restructuring of the Koseisho's functions. However, in retrospect this was inevitable.