The measure is in protest against the plan to close the Institute for Standardization and Control of Pharmaceuticals.
National Union of Microbiologists and Biochemists chairman Asher Goldshlager has announced that employees at the Ministry of Health Pharmaceutical Administration - The Institute for Standardization and Control of Pharmaceuticals in Jerusalem will stop testing Viagra pills entering Israel as of Sunday. These are the first sanctions against the Ministry of Finance plan to close the institute and fire scores of its employees next year.
Goldshlager says the firing of scores of employees will severely harm Israel's health system. "Abolishing the Institute for Standardization and Control of Pharmaceuticals will mean Israel will become a Third World country, in which a large proportion imported drugs are fake. The Ministry of Finance hasn’t learned the lesion of the Remedia affair. If there's another case of poisoning, God forbid, the lack of a state laboratory will cause a delay of many weeks until a problem is identified and solved."
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on August 12, 2004