Pharmacopoeia as quality codex for the manufacturers.

Three are the basic features of a medicine legally introduced on the market: efficacy, safety and quality. With regarding to drugs listed in a national or international pharmacopoeia, the ratio between efficacy and safety, within the range of dosage established by the codex, must be considered as official by the industry. As far as quality is concerned, the pharmacopoeia plays a fundamental role in establishing methods of analysis and technical control intended as official reference in case of controversy. The quality of drugs, pharmaceutical adjuvants or preparations listed in a modern pharmacopoeia must be considered by the industry as the minimum level of the acceptable standard for medical use, to ensure efficacy under proper storage conditions. In fact, the specifications are largely based upon suggestions made by manufacturers. Pharmaceutical specialties, being registered by Health Authorities following suitable documentation, do not have to be subjected to the standards established by the pharmacopoeia for new drugs or formulation adjuvants. The constant effort of the manufacturers to minimize risks leads to optimum quality levels, considering that samples used for control by the Health Authorities are usually picked from commercial packages containing a small number of units. To ensure statistical compliance of every sample with official pharmacopoeial standards, manufacturers are forced to exercise the highest care in every process of production and packaging. There cannot possibly be a guarantee that every single unit at the consumer's disposal will actually comply with the quality level established by a modern pharmacopoeia. Optimum quality level in every package of medical products can be achieved by following the "Good Manufacturing Practice" sponsored by the WHO; this goal requires skilled people and sophisticated equipment. The practice of quality control as an essential part of the manufacturing process in a wide range of pharmaceuticals, provides an excellent experience that may be useful to the pharmacopoeial commissions. Therefore a closer co-operation between health officials and industry's experts must be considered the best way to improve the specifications, to speed-up the revision of monographs and to collect reports on stability tests. The part of a modern pharmacopoeia, devoted to tests and standards appears today as the most important for the pharmaceutical industry because, when a controversy arises about drugs, the official methods established by the pharmacopoeia play a fundamental role in the enforcement of law. The task of compiling each new edition of a modern pharmacopoeia is becoming increasingly difficult; to speed revision any time a problem arises, the revision committees may seek advice from the numerous experts of the pharmaceutical industry thus achieving a most profitable collaboration.