In the report, Minister Dao Hong Lan clearly stated the need to fulfill the promise to strengthen management, inspection, examination and post-inspection in the production and trading of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and functional foods, especially business activities on e-commerce sites, e-commerce trading floors, and social networks.
And the "strengthening management" of the Ministry of Health has achieved specific results such as: The Drug Administration has revoked 58 receipts of cosmetic declaration forms, 2 products violating labels and 33 products violating production and labeling. Suspend, recall 9 poor quality products, destroy unsecured batches, fine nearly 600 million VND...
In the context of the market being disrupted by counterfeit and poor quality goods, the strong participation of management agencies, along with the results just announced by the Ministry of Health is a very remarkable effort.
The Minister of Health has fulfilled his promise to voters to strengthen management, inspection, examination, post-inspection work... as demonstrated through specific results.
However, people are interested and hope that the Ministry of Health will not stop here but must continue to effectively implement its promise to "clean" the market for the health of people and patients.
In particular, the Ministry of Health must have a drastic solution to end the situation of doctors prescribing, consulting and selling functional foods in hospitals, leading to the hospital no longer being a place to treat diseases, but operating as a sales model - where patients reluctantly become customers.
In the report, the Minister of Health also mentioned that the Ministry is developing a Decree on cosmetic management, with the goal of perfecting the legal framework, enhancing traceability, and transparency of products.
This is a welcome move. People also hope that the Decree will be issued soon to promptly respond to a cosmetic market that is also being exploited by counterfeit goods every day, not inferior to functional foods.
And more importantly, this Decree must come with a strong enough sanctions mechanism: increasing the penalty level to deter, permanently closing down serious violators, and prosecuting criminal liability for systematic fraud.
Another issue that needs the Ministry of Health to preside over and coordinate with other ministries and branches to monitor and handle is that untrue advertising activities, especially on social networks, are being operated as a key to "open the gate" for counterfeit goods to reach consumers.
If there is no strict control over the content, tools, and channels for distributing false advertising and causing misunderstanding to consumers, it will be difficult for all pre-authentic and post-authentic efforts of management agencies to achieve the desired results.
It is necessary to remember that, although functional foods are not drugs, for users who are cancer patients, people after surgery, people with chronic diseases... all errors and poor quality products can be paid, not only a loss of money but also a loss of health, even life.
