Plan for safe medicines

It is not difficult to make a plan and set an objective. The real difficulty is ensuring the plan can be carried out in an effective manner. However inspiring a plan is, poor implementation means it will only render lip service to its aims.

The plan approved by the State Council on Wednesday is meant to plug loopholes in the monitoring and supervision of pharmaceutical companies so that all medicines meet the national standards by 2015.

The lack of a desirable credit rating system, inadequate supervision and weak technological support were cited by the State Council as the stumbling blocks that have to be overcome for the country's production and distribution of medicines to develop in a healthy manner.