A worrying new report has revealed that Britain could be cut off from antibiotics supplies due to its 'potentially catastrophic' reliance on China for medication. China produces up to 90 per cent of the ingredients used in antibiotics, and experts have warned that President Xi could deny the NHS and Armed Forces access to infection-killing medicines at any time.
Extreme Concentration of Supply
While the UK and US source most of their antibiotics from India, India itself relies on China for 91.5 per cent of its antibiotics ingredients, according to the report from the think tank Council on Geostrategy. This extreme concentration 'exposes the US and Europe to the geopolitical calculations of the Chinese Communist Party'. In the event of a military conflict, Beijing could instantly sever medical supplies to Western forces and hospitals. Alternatively, China could quietly apply a 'health blockade' outside of war by squeezing India's supply, which would instantly starve the UK, Europe, and America of essential medications.
Political Warnings
In the report's foreword, Labour MP for North Durham Luke Akehurst warns that industrial failure in China, a sudden restriction on exports, or a souring of relations between China and the UK could 'paralyse the healthcare of Britain and its allies and partners across the Euro-Atlantic area within just a few weeks'. Shadow home affairs minister Alicia Kearns adds that 'we now face a reality where a single contamination event or geopolitical decision in a foreign and potentially hostile state could trigger catastrophic shortages across the United Kingdom'.
National Security Vulnerability
The report's author Andrew Rechenberg, an economist specialising in pharmaceutical supply chains, writes that China's control over antibiotics is 'not just an economic problem' but a 'direct health security and national security vulnerability for the United States, Britain, and Europe'. He adds: 'When so much of the world depends on so few upstream plants and firms, even a single disruption can cascade across hospitals and health systems.'
Chokepoints in the Supply Chain
The top four Chinese suppliers of antibiotics ingredients – North China Pharma, Sinobright Pharma, MS and Centrient Pharmaceuticals – account for 54 per cent of India's imports, leaving global supplies dependent on just a small number of individual companies. Meanwhile, only seven sites manufacturing the compound that creates penicillin are based in China, creating a severe 'chokepoint' in the global penicillin supply chain, the report warns. Furthermore, 'sustained price suppression' by China has cut the West out of the antibiotics manufacturing market, with just one penicillin production facility now operating in Austria. Subsidised Chinese fermentation producers have driven global import prices down by roughly 80 per cent for antibiotics ingredients since 1992, crushing the margins of Western equivalents.
Recommendations
The report calls for Western governments to bring forward financial incentives to boost antibiotic manufacturing capabilities outside of India and China, and for tariff-rate quotas to counter low-cost prices of antibiotics made abroad. It also recommends building antibiotic supply-chain security into Nato 'readiness' planning.
