Reassurance issued over counterfeiting
Reassurance that legitimately obtained medicines in the UK are unlikely to be counterfeit has been issued by the Department of Health.
The DoH said: “Cases referred to the Medicines and Healthcare products
Regulatory Agency involving counterfeit products are relatively rare.
In fact, since the case involving Zantac in 1994 (PJ, 19 February 1994,
p247), the MHRA has had no definitive evidence that counterfeit pharmaceuticals
are reaching the public via the legitimate supply chain.”
But the DoH says that counterfeit medicines are available by mail order
or internet sales. It says that last year the MHRA seized Viagra, and
products claiming to be Viagra, with an estimated value of £2.35m.
The dual reassurance and warning was prompted by Pfizer’s vice
president for global security, John Theriault, who said in London last
week that counterfeits were a global threat and that they were being
found in the legitimate supply chain in the US.
There have been four known instances of counterfeit medicines being found
in the UK supply chain. Counterfeit Zantac has been identified on three
occasions and counterfeit Ventolin inhalers once.
Tony Moffat, chief scientist at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said: “I
do not think there is a problem in the legitimate supply chain. We know
from the MHRA and from pharmacists that there has been no reported case
of counterfeit medicines in the legitimate chain in the past eight years.”
Pfizer has introduced new tamper-evident packaging for its medicines
sold in Europe. It has done this because of what it describes as
the threat of counterfeits and risks posed by improper re-packaging
and poor storage and transportation of parallel traded products.
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