By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
Lawmakers called for tighter monitoring of imported drugs and medicine Thursday, expressing worries over the possible hazardous effects of fake drugs on consumers.
During a parliamentary inspection of the Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA), the legislators urged the agency to strengthen measures to ensure the safety of imported Chinese drugs.
Rep. Yoon Seok-yong of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) said there have been many recent reports of victims suffering side effects after taking fake Chinese medical products.
China is the sixth largest medicine exporter to South Korea, selling drugs and medicine worth about $350 million per year.
``The number of fake medical products detected has soared from 44 in 2006 to 68 in 2007,'' said the lawmaker.
Yoon said 99.2 percent of the bogus medicine was detected, but the remaining 0.8 percent posed an unacceptable health threat to the public.
He said the current KFDA monitoring system had many loopholes.
``If an imported medicine item passes a quality test, the same drug doesn't have to be tested at a future date when it is imported. This means that the government has no means to detect if drug manufacturers use fake materials for a second batch of the same drug that has already passed quality testing,'' said Yoon.
KFDA Commissioner Yeo Pyo-yun admitted that his agency runs an ``ineffective" monitoring system, and pledged to fix it as soon as possible, but failed to elaborate.
As for China's milk scandal, Rep. Choi Young-hee of the largest opposition Democratic Party (DP) criticized the government for having slowly responded to the health scare.
The widening health scare has fanned fears across Asia since last month. Countries expanded bans and restrictions on milk or dairy products from China on health concerns. The melamine-tainted milk products were blamed for four deaths and kidney stones and other illnesses in 54,000 children in China. The chemical is used in producing plastic and fertilizer.
``Governments including those of the United States and Japan responded swiftly to the danger. Compared with them, the Office of the Prime Minister, which is responsible for the operation of a special task force for food safety, was very slow to respond to the incident,'' she said.
Choi said there was neither a concerted, organized response from the authorities nor a comprehensive government plan to address the issue.
GNP lawmaker Yoon said the administration initially said the amount of melamine found in the products here was too small to pose a danger, suddenly changed its tune after being criticized by the general public, losing its credibility as a consequence.