“I’ve seen antibiotics that cause allergies, blood pressures that won’t go down, anaesthetised patients who won’t sleep.”

This is Dr Minhua Zheng talking about his experiences working as a surgeon in Shanghai, China and his fears that the drugs do not work anymore.

He is one of 20 Chinese doctors raising the alarm about domestically produced generic drugs used in hospitals.

“There are widespread concerns in the industry that procurement prices are too low, prompting unethical companies to cut corners to reduce costs, affecting the efficacy of drugs,” they wrote in a letter to the Shanghai Municipal Medical Security Bureau.