Counterfeit medicines 'harm poor'
Friday, 01 Jun 2007 13:16
2D barcodes could soon be placed on drugs to stop fakes
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People in developing countries are the most likely to suffer from the sale of counterfeit drugs, a medical expert has warned.
Professor David Taylor of the School of Pharmacy at the University of London said the greatest danger is that these drugs are very often completely ineffective.
His comments follow a report from the European Commission which found that seizures of counterfeit drugs have increased fivefold; 2.5 million fake drugs have been seized in the last year.
"The big risks are not in Europe, they're in the poor world; that's where people are really killed by for example inert substances," he told the Today programme.
"You give a child a malaria medicine, it isn't effective, they die. Here, yes you might have a medicine which is an economic crime, but it's actually got the right ingredients, through to a medicine which has got nothing in, through very occasionally to something which has got something really toxic in."
He added: "The World Health Organisation has really pushed for trying to increase the penalties for this sort of crime, but as I say where it's really killing people is in sub-Saharan Africa, India, China."
Professor Taylor also warned that fake medical devices are being developed and moved through the world's markets alongside counterfeit drugs.
"A lot of this trade is with the emergent Chinese and Indian economies building up huge production potential, then you can move product into the UK," he said.
"And it's not just medicines. I've heard of it with medical devices too; things for monitoring diabetes for example which actually originated in China, moved through Pakistan into the UK and then into Europe and they didn't work properly."
Earlier this week the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) announced its support for industry-wide and pan-European solutions to create a more transparent medicine supply chain.
Proposals include tamper-resistant packs and for medicines to be labelled with a 2D barcode.