Counterfeit Medical Products

Counterfeit Medical Products

How can we protect people against and give people information about counterfeit medical products?

We are confronted with counterfeit products on a daily basis. The Oxford dictionary defines counterfeit as follows: 'made in exact imitation of something valuable with the intention to deceive or defraud'. There is a huge variety of counterfeit products. This variety includes luxury goods such as sunglasses and even the most harmful counterfeit products, namely medicines. People who use counterfeit medical products usually do this unknowingly, and put their lives at risk, because these products can be lethal. Counterfeit medicines can e.g. lack the necessary healing components or, even worse, contain poison.

In the developed countries, the chance that one will use a counterfeit medical product without knowing it is 1%. That does not seem much, but 10% of the total market for medicines in the world is counterfeit. This counterfeit percentage can even go up to 30% in Africa and Latin America. The fact that only 1% of the medicines are counterfeit in the developed countries does not imply that the counterfeit medical products cannot reach you; because you can buy counterfeit medicines on the internet without knowing they are counterfeit. It is important to understand that counterfeit medical products are a global phenomenon and that it must be stopped. The latter is only possible when both sides, the demand and the supply side, are taken into consideration. There are several reasons for this double action: ethical concerns, the health of the buyers, and the harm it causes to the pharmaceutical industry itself.

How to protect and inform the people?

Several organizations fight against the production and the trade of counterfeit medicines. They do this by working together on an international scale. The most important organizations fighting against counterfeit medicines are Interpol and the World Health Organization.

Every year, thousands of people die after using counterfeit medical products. Therefore, the WHO started a task force to cope with the counterfeit medicines. First of all, they propose measures against the illegal trade of counterfeit medical products. Furthermore, they want to inform people about the health risks these products cause and remind them that the market of counterfeit medicines is increasing rapidly. The WHO task force urges medicine manufacturers to make their products more complicated, since today many medical products are easy to counterfeit. Proof for this can be found in developing countries where the counterfeit medical products are sold just like fruit and vegetables on the street markets. If you buy medicines on a street market, there is one chance in four that they are counterfeit medicines. The task force also intends to help governments to stop the corruption in the sections of the police dealing with the fight against counterfeit medicines.

Globally, several organizations are trying to find different ways to protect people against and give people information about counterfeit medicines. Some methods have been found, but none of them have already been completely worked out. One of these methods for example is to make pills recognizable by attaching edible labels on them. The labels contain specific information for the users of the pills so they can be sure that the pills are genuine. But after a while, these labels will also be counterfeited and we can start from scratch again.

Nowadays the pharmaceutical industry tries to make it more complicated to counterfeit medicines by securing the packaging of the medicines with holograms, bar codes and seals. The problem however is that end-users who live in the Third World do not pay much attention to this when they buy their medicines.

Another method is to inform people via an internet platform. The aim is to collect all the real time data about counterfeit medical products. This website should inform the end-users of medical products on safe medicines and instruct them about wide-spread counterfeit products, etc. The website also helps them to distinguish real from fake medicine in such a way that they will not trust inadequately identified medication that they bought or will buy. However, in many cases it is nearly impossible to see the difference.

However, this use of an internet platform is not an ideal solution that solves all problems: only 22% of the people in developing countries have access to the internet. In Africa only 11% of the people can be reached by the internet.

Another solution could be to reduce the price of the medicines in the Third World. In that case the