Some drug prices in China will be reduced after the National Development and Reform Commission announces the results of a week-long investigation into some drug production and importation costs.

The commission recently conducted the probe, the first of its kind in China, on 21 pharmaceutical factories that produce Western medicine and seven that make traditional Chinese medicine. The producers are both domestic and foreign-invested.

Some companies involved in drug imports were also investigated.

The result of the investigation has not been released yet. The purpose is to ease the financial burden on patients.

Pharmaceutical factories commonly jack up the prices of their products to gain huge profits, and those soaring prices have been blamed as a key reason for the hefty costs of medical treatment.

The commission will use the investigation findings to launch a national campaign to reduce drug prices, which will cover 130 kinds of Western and at least 30 traditional Chinese medicines, the commission said.

Prices of anti-virus and anti-cancer drugs will be included for the first time. Also, producers of some traditional Chinese medicines, whose prices are generally considered affordable, will be asked to reduce their prices for the first time.

Despite 17 rounds of price cuts usually by 20 to 40 per cent covering more than 1,500 kinds of medicines in the past few years, people continue to say the costs of medical service and medicine are unaffordable.

One reason is that in the past, it was easy for producers to register a new name for their medicines. Each time the government asked them to reduce the price of a certain kind of medicine, they would simply re-register it as a "new drug" under a different name.

Even though the "new" drug was just as effective as the old one, the producer sold it at much higher prices.

Another problem is rampant bribery in dealings between drug traders and hospitals. Working as agents of pharmaceutical companies, these traders bribed hospitals and doctors to prescribe their expensive medicines instead of cheaper ones.

The result has been an outcry to authorities to regulate the drug marketing process. In some cases the retail price of the drugs was 10 times what it cost to produce.

Last month, the State Food and Drug Administration opened a centre to oversee new drug registration.

(China Daily 05/02/2006 page1)