National Health Commission improves the reserve of children's medicine

On June 1st, the National Health Commission held a special press conference on the physical and mental health of children and adolescents. Gong Xiangguang, the director of the Drug Administration Department, responded to the widespread concern of parents about the shortage of children's drugs, clarifying that China will comprehensively improve the supply system of children's drugs through four levels of joint prevention, dynamic monitoring, temporary import, and in-hospital preparations. In the future, the central and local drug reserves will be optimized, with a focus on ensuring the supply of commonly used antipyretic, analgesic, and antiviral drugs during peak seasons, and improving the problem of drug shortage in pediatric emergency departments during high incidence periods of infectious diseases.
Relying on the national, provincial, municipal, and county emergency response mechanisms for shortage drugs, the success rate of handling shortage drugs at the provincial, municipal, and county levels has remained stable at over 96% in the past three years. The number of shortage varieties that require national coordination and allocation has sharply decreased from 64 in 2021 to 2 in 2025, and the shortage situation has significantly improved. The next step is to optimize the central and local children's medication reserves, focusing on the high incidence periods of infectious diseases such as influenza, stocking up on essential categories in advance, and resolving the seasonal shortage of pediatric drugs.
Priority should be given to indications for children in the establishment of the national shortage drug catalog: more than half of the six drugs on the national shortage list are used for children, and 30 of the 57 clinically necessary key monitored varieties are labeled with specifications suitable for children. The supervisory department tracks the production, inventory, and circulation data of pharmaceutical companies on a regular basis, warns of supply interruption risks in the first time, and stabilizes the supply base from the production end.
Starting from 2022, the National Health Commission, in conjunction with the drug regulatory authorities, has opened up temporary import channels for new drugs from overseas. A total of 51 overseas drug import certifications have been completed, and more than ten children's rare diseases and anti-tumor special drugs such as fibrinogen and vasopressin have been implemented, filling the clinical gap of unapproved varieties in China and improving the accessibility of medication for difficult and severe pediatric patients.
Encourage the cross institutional adjustment and circulation of compliant pediatric hospital preparations within the medical consortium; In response to the shortage of specifications and dosage forms of essential children's drugs in the market, the National Health Commission plans to sort out and issue a catalog of children's preparations for medical institutions, support hospitals to independently prepare scarce varieties, and supplement the shortage of commercial drug supply with in-house preparations.