Heated response for Israel drug safety reform

Israel's state-run hospital managers are "up in arms" following the country's Health Ministry decision to outsource safety check for imported medicines to the hospitals themselves, the Haaretz newspaper reports.

The ministry is accused of endangering the public, with an emotive commentary by Yoel Donchin, the director of the Patient Safety Unit at Hadassah University Hospital, Jerusalem, being published in the left-leaning newspaper, which compared the Ministry's alleged dereliction of duty with the development of a chemical for the Nazi extermination program in Germany and the thalidomide scandal of the 1960s. In response, the Health Ministry said it is trying to overcome "bureaucratic delays" for medicines that are not yet approved in Israel, although they are by the US Food and Drug Administration. Israel drug imports per year are valued at about $80.0 million.