Understanding the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain
SAMANTHA CART
The COVID-19 pandemic forced ordinary Americans — not just economists , manufacturers and businesspeople — to consider and confront the country ’ s supply chains . Even now , two years after the onset of the pandemic , walking the aisles of a supermarket can reveal bare shelves and empty spaces where certain products should be . As a result , more and more people want to know where their merchandise comes from .
In December 2021 , the U . S . Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) announced that 111 drugs were on backorder , including some heart medications , antibiotics and cancer medications . While some of those issues have since been resolved , the FDA ’ s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research subsequently asked manufacturers to evaluate their entire supply chains .
According to Dr . William Petros , professor of pharmaceutical sciences , Gates Wigner Endowed Chair and dean of the West Virginia University ( WVU ) School of Pharmacy , experts have been discussing the hazards of the offshore manufacturing of pharmaceuticals for several years .
“ If I go buy a shirt , I can look on the tag and see where it is made . You know where your food is made , you know where your clothes are made , but you don ’ t know where your pharmaceuticals are made ,” he says .
Petros says even pharmacists have a hard time finding this information . Containers of drugs delivered to a pharmacy are distributed from a certain company , but this company may have plants in multiple countries .
When taking a pill or tablet , what is ingested is not all drug . There are usually around 10 other ingredients in it to help it dissolve in the body , among other things . The active pharmaceutical ingredient ( API ) combined with these additional ingredients creates the final dosage product .
“ Here are the hard facts : approximately 90 % of our generic drugs and about half or more of our brand name drugs are made , at least in part , overseas , and 90 % of the API in the world is made in
China right now ,” he says . “ You can just imagine if we ever went to war with China or China shut down for some reason — the world would be in trouble .”
These facts have forced Americans , including many West Virginians , to consider what would happen if they no longer had access to their daily blood pressure , cholesterol , diabetes or other chronic condition medications . In a state with a prevalence of poor health diagnoses , including the highest overall cardiovascular disease prevalence in the nation , this information elicits questions such as : Do medications produced in India and China present a greater risk to U . S . patients ? Does our reliance on foreign suppliers put us at risk for lower quality medications or an overall shortage of these medications ? What can we do to ensure access to safe , domestically manufactured pharmaceuticals ?
“ As we experienced the COVID-19 pandemic , we saw that a lot of supply chains were quite disrupted because of our reliance on other countries , whether it was China , India or Italy ,” says Clay
32
WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE