Revised: 28 June 2012
Publications
Publication of Medicine and Medical Device Recalls in New Zealand
Medsafe will be publishing information on all medicine and medical device recalls and market actions occurring in New Zealand from 1 July 2012. This information will be available on the Medsafe website in the form of a searchable database. Links to the database, and further information on the content and search functions will be advised later this month.
The purpose of publishing this information is to provide publicly accessible information about medicine and medical device recalls and other market actions. For some recall actions there will be links to additional information about the recall, e.g media statement, questions and answers etc. This will include timely and targeted information to the public, healthcare professionals, healthcare organisations and other stakeholders about market actions in New Zealand.
It is anticipated that this additional information will increase transparency and enhance the information and advice that is currently distributed as a consequence of a recall or other market action in New Zealand.
Currently Medsafe is working with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) on a number of Business to Business projects in anticipation of the establishment of a joint regulatory agency for both countries. One of these projects involves the establishment of a common recalls portal where information on medicine and medical device recalls in both Australia and New Zealand will be published. This was signalled in a communique released following the first meeting of the Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Agency (ANZTPA) Implementation Ministerial Council meeting in January 2012. http://www.tga.gov.au/about/international-anztpa-imc-120128.htm It is due to be operational by the beginning of next year.
Experience obtained from publication of recall information to the Medsafe website, together with information available from experience of publishing recalls to the TGA website will be used to inform the decisions for the ANZTPA recalls portal. The ANZTPA B2B project plan includes a consultation phase and industry is encouraged to use this opportunity.
