Impressive results at safety hotline
Print Edition
SINCE being established in 2012, the food-safety complaint and reporting hotline 12331 has received about 300,000 calls, all of which received a timely response, officials from the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration said on the line's four-year anniversary.
The hotline, the first in the nation, was also set up to handle complaints related to cosmetics, drugs and medical devices. It opened for trial operations on January 1, 2012, and was officially launched on March 29. In its first year, it received about 41,000 calls for consultation, complaints, tips and suggestions, said the Shanghai FDA, which authorized the hotline.
Last year, 12331 received over 91,000 calls, among which 40 percent were tips or reports of possible safety infractions. Officials claim that the problem behind each call was resolved within an average of 19 days last year, four days shorter than in 2012.
To encourage whistleblowers, officials in Shanghai raised the highest reward for a useful tip-off from 200,000 yuan (US$30,769) to 300,000 yuan in February.
In the past four years, local residents have provided over 100,000 tips and reports to the FDA about suspected illegal behaviors related to food and drug safety. The authority has also handed out 3,433 reward payments totalling nearly 2.4 million yuan to whistleblowers.
In addition to handling complaints and tips, 12331 is also a service hotline. So far, the hotline has helped over 6,000 residents with emergencies such as market-shortages of medications.
“We received many complaint calls about the shortage of a medicine to treat children’s epilepsy at the beginning of 2015,” said Yang Quan, the hotline's director. “Many parents and grandparents were desperate for our help, as a child’s condition can become serious if they stop taking the drug regularly.”
Hotline operators reported this situation to the Shanghai FDA, which contacted a local producer of the drug. The producer said it was not getting essential ingredients for the drug from its supplier in Shandong Province. The Shanghai FDA helped the drug maker track down another supplier so it could resume production. “We informed everyone who called us for the drug and told them the drug was available now,” Yang said. “Any demands and complaints about food, drugs, cosmetics and medical appliances can call us.”
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