Brazil Moves to Formalize A Phased Rollout, Starting Next October

If you do business in Brazil then you know that everything is published there in Portuguese, including ANVISA’s documents.  It is necessary to translate everything unless you can read Portuguese.  I can’t, so whenever something comes out I have to do a quick translation to get an idea of how significant it is.  Last week, ANVISA published two new documents related to their future pharma serialization and traceability mandate.  They are important, because they relate directly to the schedule and some of the requirements of Brazil’s pharma serialization and traceability mandate.

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DSCSA: Will 2020 Be FDA’s Year To Leap Forward?

When it comes to the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), the FDA seems to alternate between hibernating, and leaping forward.  2017 through mid-2018 was a leap forward period with the publication of 8 draft or final guidance documents and 3 public meetings.  Then in 2019, hibernation.  Yes, FDA’s list of DSCSA guidance and policy documents has two entries for 2019 so far, but one is simply a notice reopening the comment period on the DSCSA Pilots request for information that was originally opened in 2016 and 2017.  The other is the compliance policy that provides one year of enforcement discretion for the 2019 wholesaler saleable returns requirement (see “No Surprise: DSCSA Verification Delay”).  Neither were very taxing on the FDA to prepare.  What should the FDA do next?  What should they be doing right now?

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Russia: Rationality Makes An Appearance at the 11th Hour. Will It Matter?

Flag by Zscout370 – Государственный флаг Российской Федерации. Цвета флага: (Blue – Pantone 286 C, Red – Pantone 485 C) взяты из [1][2][3][4], Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33285605

We’ve seen this sequence of events before in China, Brazil, and India, and now they may be happening in the Russian Federation.  The government issues regulatory requirements mandating pharma serialization and tracing with crazy-aggressive deadlines and with confusing, sometimes illogical requirements.  Amendments are issued, sometimes helping, sometimes making things worse.  Then just before (or just after) the deadline, when confusion reigns, someone else in the government issues calls for rationality, and the government quickly folds their requirements, rethinks and retrenches.  In China and Brazil it resulted in a full withdrawal and total redesign of their entire approach…and much more reasonable deadlines.  So far in India it has mostly just resulted in pushing the deadline out, again and again, but even there, there are signs that some are proposing a complete withdrawal and redesign.  So far in the Russian Federation, all we have is the posting of a set of very rational recommendations by a group of participants in parliamentary hearings of the State Duma Committee on Health Protection. Their hearings were apparently related to the spotty readiness of the government and industry and their report comes less than 3 months from the deadline for serialization and tracing of all drugs.

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