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Scientific Symposium

Quality of Pharmaceuticals - Idealism vs Reality

According to the World Health Organization, a counterfeit medicine is “a medicine, which is deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to identity and/or source. Counterfeiting can apply to both branded and generic products and counterfeit products may include products with the correct ingredients or with the wrong ingredients, without active ingredients, with insufficient active ingredients or with fake packaging.”

For the past few years the idea of counterfeit drugs has become more apparent. Currently, it is passively accepted that 10 % of medicines around the world could be counterfeit. This figure fails to reflect the wide range of counterfeits in different countries and there are many difficulties in the measurement of counterfeits, thus only allow assumptions to be made about the potential range of counterfeit medicines in different regions.

On the other hand, the production of counterfeit or substandard anti-infective drugs is a widespread and ill-recognized problem that contributes to morbidity, mortality, and drug resistance, leading to false reporting of resistance and toxicity and loss of confidence in health-care systems. Counterfeit drugs particularly affect the most disadvantaged people in poor countries. Although advances in forensic chemical analysis and simple field tests will enhance drug quality monitoring, improved access to inexpensive genuine medicines, support of drug regulatory authorities, increased open reporting, vigorous law enforcement, and more international cooperation with determined political leadership will be essential to counter this threat.

Some of the questions we would like to discuss upon are:

• Are counterfeit medicines a real problem of the present and the future and what can we do about it? How widespread is this issue?
• How can counterfeit medicines affect people’s health and how severe are these damages? How can we increase public awareness of this issue?
• How can we combat counterfeit drugs? What should be done to assure the safety, efficacy and quality of drugs?
• What kind of problems lead to possible counterfeiting, how can we resolve them? How can we detect and report counterfeit drugs? What kinds of drugs have the highest counterfeit rates?
• What are substandard drugs? Can they be considered counterfeit? Is it possible for a legitimate manufacturer to deliberately produce a substandard drug?
• Which international organizations are involved in resolving this matter and what do they do? How may a pharmacist help?