China opens door on SFDA's workings

As part of the build up to the Olympic Games which open on August 8, China's government has issued a tough anti-doping statement and provided details to the media of the State Food and Drug Administration and of aspects of Chinese health care. The Communist-controlled government is making every effort to project a positive image of itself, including the effectiveness of drug regulators via the state-controlled Xinhua news agency.

The SFDA, which has 64,000 employees, was formed in 2003 from the consolidation of the State Drug Administration, itself created in 1998. There are 2,692 local drug regulatory departments of which 31 are spread across the country's provinces and the rest at smaller regional levels. In addition, there are 3,540 disease control and prevention centers employed by other government agencies and about 150,000 licensed pharmacists for a population of over 1.3 billion.

Traditional Chinese medicine, while it has been losing some market share to pharmaceuticals, remains a significant and government-sanctioned therapeutic industry. As of the end of 2007, there were 2,469 approved TCM treatments under state regulation. In total, over 9,000 TCM preparations are approved for public sale in China, of which 58,000 have been issued with approval numbers, Xinhua reports.