Taipei, July 4 (CNA) The Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) said Saturday it will respond by Sept. 4 to a public petition calling for emergency contraceptive pills to be available from pharmacies without a doctor’s prescription.<\/p>\n
The petition, launched Wednesday on the government’s Public Policy Online Participation Network Platform, surpassed in two days the 5,000-signature threshold required for an official response, drawing more than 8,000 endorsements.<\/p>\n
The proposal urges the government to reclassify emergency contraceptive pills as pharmacist-instructed over-the-counter drugs, arguing that women need timely access within the drugs’ effective window of 72 to 120 hours.<\/p>\n
The TFDA said it will first contact the petitioner to clarify the proposal before issuing a formal response within the required two-month period.<\/p>\n
The petition follows controversy over a TFDA proposal announced on June 25 to add three prescription drugs — misoprostol, levonorgestrel and ulipristal acetate — to Taiwan’s drug traceability system and thereafter only be available with a prescription.<\/p>\n
Women’s rights groups and pharmacists have argued that levonorgestrel and ulipristal acetate, both emergency contraceptives, should instead be made available under pharmacist supervision to improve timely access.<\/p>\n
The TFDA said it is considering a dual-track approach that would allow the drugs to be obtained either by prescription or under a pharmacist’s instruction while balancing safety and accessibility.<\/p>\n
The agency added that the proposed traceability requirements remain under a 60-day public consultation period and could be revised after reviewing public feedback.<\/p>\n
(By Shen Pei-yao and Lee Hsin-Yin) <\/p>\n
Enditem\/AW
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taipei, July 4 (CNA) The Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) said Saturday it will respond by Sept.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[97,243],"class_list":["post-743947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-health","tag-medication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}