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If they know their status, will they be treated with genuine medicines? (photo by Jon Rawlinson CC-BY)

Counterfeit medicines are presenting a huge problem for all countries, and in particular developing countries where it undermines their health care systems, causes death and serious illness, and interferes with genuine attempts to deal with disease and epidemics.

Counterfeit medicines pass as genuine by false labelling of both branded and generic products, and often their contents do not have the correct ingredients or any active ingredient at all. Occasionally the ingredients are toxic and cause death or serious illness to those taking the medicine. Packaging is easy to produce and the lure of large profits makes it easy to recruit build and staff a manufacturing facility.

The types of medicines counterfeited include lifestyle medicines, antibiotics, hormones, steroids, pain killers, and HIV medicines.

The World Health Organisation’s International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (IMPACT) states that it is impossible to quantify the extent of counterfeiting as the problem is so complex. The information supplied by governments and non-governmental organisations, especially from areas where the regulatory and market systems are weak, is difficult to collate and interpret. So it would see that any statistics published on the extent of the problem is only guesswork.

They do estimate, however, that in Africa, and parts of Asia and Latin America, as much as 30% of medicines on sale can be counterfeit. While in the former Soviet Union countries as much as 20%. In Western Countries it is estimated that about 1% of the pharmaceutical market is counterfeit medicines, and 50% of online websites are estimated to sell counterfeit drugs.

IMPACT propose that the only way to combat counterfeit medicines is to increase international collaboration, and improve regulations and enforcement. For instance, in South-East Asian countries, where the problem is widespread, it is only a civil offence to manufacture counterfeit medicines. Pay a small fine and the counterfeiter is back at back to work.

More information IMPACT.