BMJ  2007;335:1120-1121 (1 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39412.431655.AD

Feature

Counterfeit Medicines

Bitter pills

Andrew Jack, pharmaceuticals correspondent

Financial Times, London

Andrew.Jack@ft.com

Counterfeit drugs are estimated to represent 10% of the global market in medicines, rising to almost a third in some parts of the developing world. Andrew Jack reports on bids to tackle a growing threat to patients' health

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

When the UK medicines watchdog unveiled its first ever strategy to tackle counterfeiting last week,1 it was responding to growing concern about the increasingly complex, dangerous, and expanding international traffic in fake drugs. A few weeks earlier, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency had brought to trial one of the most ambitious prosecutions to date, leading to the imprisonment of four men for handling £1.5m ({euro}2m; $3m) in counterfeits.2 Other cases concerning still more elaborate schemes are scheduled in the months ahead.

In the past three years, the agency has issued nine withdrawal notices for suspect prescription medicines discovered in the legal distribution chain, compared with just one in the previous decade. Pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer have been forced into costly withdrawals of batches of their medicines faked by criminals.3

These incidents are almost certainly an underestimate of the extent of the traffic in counterfeit drugs in . . . [Full text of this article]


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Hurrah - an anti-counterfeiting strategy
Jim Thomson
bmj.com, 8 Dec 2007 [Full text]
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