Children's medication needs improvement

There are a few kinds of medication specific to children in China and and cases of excessive use are prominent clinical problems, experts stated at the Children's Medication Safety Forum hosted by the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), Legal Daily reported on Tuesday.

Song Hualin, associate professor at the Law School of Nankai University, noted that, as the pediatric population is less than adults, the development of children's medicine has been long, with low profitability, costly and evaluations are difficult. As a result, enterprises are lacking enthusiasm to produce or develop products.

Supporting policies should be made to improve the current situation, such as establishing a special fund for the research of children's medication, providing technical guidance to medical research, development, examination, and approval, setting a market exclusivity period or extended period and granting tax cut or exemption to children's medicine production enterprises, Song added.

According to the forum's participants, it is recommended that supporting policies to encourage research and development of medicines for children should include many aspects, including a pricing mechanism, health care system and procurement tenders.

According to SFDA insiders, the authority has prioritized review of the application process for child medicine registration and research for the market exclusivity policy.

In addition, there will be active cooperation between pricing mechanism and procurement tendering authorities to develop appropriate support and guidelines to encourage the production of pharmaceutical research and development of medicines suitable for use by children.