Leukemia medicine supply resumes

A pharmaceutical company has resumed supplying leukemia medicine for children after a severe shortage triggered widespread panic among the families of patients.

Premier Li Keqiang urged all involved parties on Monday to take swift action to ensure availability.

"The lack of medicine will make it tougher for families whose children have leukemia," he was quoted as saying on the State Council's website. "We should stand in their shoes, attach great importance to the problem and take effective steps in this special case to ensure the supply of the low-priced domestic medicine, so as to lessen the pain of those families."

The medicine - mercaptopurine - is the main medication for acute lymphocytic leukemia in children.

Zhebei Pharmaceutical, one of the certified producers of the medicine, has promised to provide 60,000 bottles to its national distributor and made available in hospitals and pharmacies within the next few days, according to news website Zhejiang Online.

The company delivered 15,000 bottles on Tuesday, according to the WeChat account of Deqing county, where it is located.

Six pharmaceutical companies nationwide are certified to produce the medicine, but five of them ceased production long ago. Zhebei halted production in March - but only temporarily - because of a production line upgrade, according to Tan Guojun, the deputy manager, who was quoted by Zhejiang Online. The new production line was approved on Friday, and the company resumed production of the leukemia medicine immediately.

Tan said most companies are reluctant to produce the medicine because of the relatively small market, the rising cost of ingredients and its inflexible price cap.

The dwindling supply had caused a panic among parents of children who had the lymphatic disease. A search of the online forum for leukemia on Baidu showed more than 100 posts since 2013 asking where the medicine can be bought around the country.

Yuan Xiaojun, a doctor at Xinhua Hospital in Shanghai, told Shanghai news website thepaper.cn in an earlier report that while the original price of a bottle of medicine was about 40 yuan ($6), the market price has risen to more than 140 yuan in some places, and the hospital has been short of supplies for five months.

Since the medicine has been hard to find, many parents have bought it online, and some asked their friends to buy it overseas. Yu worried about the quality of the product purchased through unofficial channels.

The medicine shortage has rung an alarm bell for authorities, underlining the need to work together to ensure supply of domestically made low-priced medicine.

In June, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, together with seven other related government organs, issued a guideline on improving the availability of medicines in short supply.