Sadly, the lack of information here is due to the fact the FDA doesn't publish details about many inspections. We requested and received many inspection documents, but even those are not comprehensive. 😔

My understanding from talking with pharmacists is the distributor has a lot of control over which company's product gets filled. Sometimes, but not always, you need to find a different pharmacy to get a different company generic. Talk to your pharmacist, though! They know a lot and are happy to help

The FDA sometimes collaborates with foreign inspection agencies when they do inspections of foreign facilities. They're not always solo.

But these inspections are planned long in advance and are complex to set up. Refusal to allow an FDA inspector into a facility can result in imports being banned.

12/ For more on how you can use Rx Inspector, we’ve made a guide here:
www.propublica.org/article/rx-i...

11/ See what you can find about your own generic prescription medications here
👇👇👇
projects.propublica.org/rx-inspector/

We want to hear from you, what did you find?

10/ To search for a prescription, you will need two pieces of information: the drug name and company name. Sometimes this is the manufacturer or “MFR” on the label – regardless of if they actually made the medication or not.

Here we are searching for Gabapentin by Cipla.

9/ Import alerts and facility inspections can look scary, but doctors emphasize that stopping your medication is a bad idea.

If you find something concerning, you should talk to your doctor or pharmacist. They can help you understand what the actual risks might be and what to do about them.

8/ Further back is a different story. In 2009 an inspection found the facility conditions were unacceptable. The FDA soon after banned the import of drugs from it.

A year and a half later, an FDA inspection found less serious issues that could be resolved. The import ban was lifted soon after.

7/ The Rx Inspector facility page shows that recent inspections resulted in the FDA determining an acceptable state. This is a good outcome for a facility inspection.

6/ But by using Rx Inspector, we can now find the Quallent Atorvastatin medication’s factory. This Apotex facility has the same Canadian postal code that was written on the label.

5/ Last month, we published the results of our attempt to find where a bottle of Quallent Atorvastatin medication was made. The trail left off with a vague label reference to Apotex and a Canadian postal code. A dead end.

www.propublica.org/article/fda-...

4/ ProPublica described the app and the methodology used to build it to the FDA, which did not comment. The agency previously told ProPublica that it doesn’t reveal where drugs are made on inspection reports to protect what it deemed confidential commercial information.

3/ In our reporting, we found that consumers often have no way of knowing if the medications they are taking came from contaminated factories, or were outright banned from shipping drugs to the U.S., but then granted special exemptions to do so anyway.
www.propublica.org/series/rx-ro...

2/ Why are we doing this? With every bottle of prescription medication comes an implied promise: The drugs are safe and effective.

But the FDA provides only intermittent oversight of the factories where generic drugs are made.

It's true! The question is: will they improve it?

New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people

www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

RIP Greg 🫡