Czechoslovak Pharmaceutical Industry.

SPOFA, Prag, 1965, 122 Seiten mit 43 Farbbildern. Gebunden Leinen.

During the past 25 years, the world development of pharmaceutical production with all its technical and economic consequences passed through a period of an intense boom. In Czechoslovakia, at the beginning of that upward era, the pharmaceutical production did not exist as industrial branch. A great number of small producers of drugs, who predominantly processed imported raw materials, could only partially meet the home demand so that the major part of necessary medicaments had to be imported. We thus lagged, as far as the research and the proper manufacture of drugs was concerned, behind the world development. Centralization of the Czechoslovak socialist Health Service, after 1945, has created favourable conditions of development not only for the pharmaceutical research but also for the production of drugs. The Czechoslovak chemico-pharmaceutical and pharmacological research into new medicaments has played in recent years an important role in creating new values for a modern pharmacotherapy as well as in searching for the stability of application forms and their clinical assessment as final phase of research activity. All this, together with the development of chemistry and the utilization of a biochemical, electro-physiological and morphological approach, has favoured the present level of the pharmaceutial production in Czechoslovakia and the general development of pharmacotherapy. Czechoslovak pharmaceutical research is ramified and concentrated in three specialized Institutes. It comprises chemical research works with syntheses of organic substances such as chemotherapeutics, antihistaminics, cytostatics and psychopharmacons, biochemical research into natural substances isolated from animal organs and plants, produced by biochemical processes, such as antibiotics, vitamins, hormones, enzymes, alkaloids, glycosides, etc. No less care should be devoted to give a newly discovered, biologically active substance a suitable, stable and efficient final form. That is why also in our country the research and the preparation of dispensing forms are given great care comprising long-lasting and strict tests. We are aware of that a progress in a large-scale production of drugs would not be possible without continual improvement and development in the sphere of production and stability of medicaments, without searching for the most suitable forms for their easy and painless introduction into the human organism. Of course, one of the most important stages of introducing a new drug into therapy is its clinical evaluation. Nowadays, these problems are given extraordinary attention not only in our country but throughout the world. The most careful measures are sought for preventing a drug from being introduced into therapy if not absolutely safe as to the possibility of provoking undesirable side- or teratogenic effects. Production of drugs in Czechoslovakia is subjected directly to the Ministry of Health and forms a part of its medical care. It is responsible for the observation of all the strictest criteria prior to the beginning of a clinical trial of every new drug. This means that every newly introduced drug has to pass through a thorough preliminary research and tests for toxicity or innocuousness of all the substances used, in particular those not used in therapy before, as well as through a clinico-pharmacological experiment. It is a duty of all workers of the Czechoslovak pharmaceutical research and production as well as of all Health-Service workers to protect the man from any danger that can be foreseen and to express valid scientific conclusions on the effects and the innocuous character of every new drug. Scientific Council of the Ministry of Health assesses then every new Czechoslovak medicament in the stage of a terminated development. In this function the Council is seconded by a number of subsidiary organs and advisory staffs of experts who collaborate with the Czechoslovak pharmaceutical research during all the stages of development. Here the collaboration with the Universities and the respective special Institutes of Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences is fully utilized. Manufacture of drugs in Czechoslovakia, concentrated in SPOFA-United Pharmaceutical Works, is a relatively young industrial branch as compared with the other traditional Czechoslovak industrial branches. Thanks to the socialist building-up and modernization of the industry, the continual expansion of capacities of the individual enterprises, the home production of primary raw materials, the mechanization and automation of the preparation of dispensing forms, Czechoslovakia has been coming to the fore and ranges now with big pharmaceutical producers. In comparison with the year 1948, the poduction of drugs in Czechoslovakia has risen 38 times, the production of antibiotics 290 times. The export has been expanding and the SPOFA drugs are at present exported all over the world.