The National Assembly passed the National Assembly plenary session to revise the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act...Non-substitute drugs or unstable supplies include national essential drugs
Oct 27, 2025
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First of all, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety will discuss items that need stable supply due to temporary increases in demand at the National Essential Drug Supply Council to effectively respond to drug supply instability, and expand and reorganize them into a council involving the private sector to reflect opinions from patient organizations and health care sites.
National essential drugs are essential for health care, but it is difficult to supply them stably only with market functions, and the National Council on the Stable Supply of Essential Medicines is a council to designate medicines essential for health care but unstable supply as national essential drugs and discuss necessary matters for stable supply.
Rep. Seo Mi-hwa (Democratic Party of Korea), a member of the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee who proposed the revision of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act, said that the revision expanded the definition of essential drugs in health care to include drugs that are essential for health care but have no alternatives or are difficult to supply stably only with market functions.
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has also established the basis for the establishment of a 'Natural Products Safety Management Research Institute' to ensure the safety and quality of natural products-derived drugs.
The law on drug management has also been revised, and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety will submit the status of drug possession and disposal plans if the drug handler reports the closure to systematically manage the remaining drugs after the closure, and report them to the integrated drug management system if the drug is discarded or transferred even after the closure.
In addition, the revised Sanitary Products Management Act automatically inspects and repairs hygiene products imported repeatedly in order to establish a quick and efficient sanitary products import inspection system to the extent that it is not a problem for public safety. In addition, samples or advertising items brought in for holding exhibitions, fairs, etc. shall be exempted from the import declaration.
In addition, the law on testing and inspection in the food and drug sectors was revised, and if the representative of the testing and inspection agency is not directly engaged in testing and inspection work, it has improved the effectiveness of education by designating a person in charge to receive education on behalf of the representative.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
