usman_1112
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2009
- Messages
- 148
- Reaction score
- 0
Counterfeit drugs are emerging as a worldwide dilemma and in Pakistan.
The Pakistan Manual of Drug Laws, defines a counterfeit drug as "a drug, the label or outer packing of which is an imitation of, resembles or so resembles as to be calculated to deceive the label or outer packing of a drug manufacturer."
According to the World Health Organization, a counterfeit medicine is one, which is deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to identity and/or source. Counterfeit drugs may contain wrong active ingredients, wrong amounts of the ingredients or no active ingredients at all. Counterfeit drugs result in death or disability and are becoming leading causes of therapeutic failure and disease resistance
Diplomatic niceties meant that the main manufacturers, China and India, were not named.
Counterfeit drugs constitute 40 to 50 percent of all medicines available in Pakistan and according to the World Health Organization (WHO) Pakistanis spend 77 percent of their household health budgets on medicines half of which may be fake or unfit for human consumption
The Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufactures Association (PPMA) states that the rate of production of counterfeit drugs in the country is only 0.4 percent. What a Great joke with poor Nation? Pakistan is considered one of the 13 countries of the world where the manufacturing of counterfeit medicines is on the rise. The situation is alarming, as the country is also alleged as being a counterfeit hub- exporting counterfeit drugs to North America, Europe and Africa .
U.N. health and crime agencies say counterfeit drugs are killing people from China to Canada and they "promote the development of new strains of viruses, parasites and bacteria ... for example in the case of malaria or HIV.'' And in many countries their manufacture and distribution is not even illegal.
British House of Commons, a member of the British parliament Charles Walker identified Pakistan as a country where counterfeit medicines were produced
About 40 to 50 per cent of medicines being sold in the country were counterfeit, which might cause prolonged illness or even death of patients, According to The Centre for research and Security Studies of Pakistan in 2008. PMA Secretary General Dr Qaiser Sajjad that the government needs to seriously work to control the production and sale of counterfeit medicines in Pakistan, which is currently ranked 13th in the world for the practice.
Nine Drugs Courts has been established by the Federal Governement in pursuance of Section 31 of the Drugs Act 1976.
Counterfeiting is a reaction to the high drug prices imposed by pharmaceutical companies. This view holds that the solution would be to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry and impose strict price controls according to Noam Chomsky According to World Health Organisation estimates; fake medicines represent 10 per cent of the global pharmaceutical industry at some 45 billion euros and have started to penetrate drug markets in the developed world.
Without such reforms, the counterfeiters will continue to kill hundreds and thousands of people every year."
How duties push up the price of legal drugs Combined duties and taxes
Sierra Leone 40% Nigeria 34% Pakistan 33% Bangladesh 29% Jamaica 27% Morocco 25% Mexico 24% according to European Union
The problem of counterfeit medicine is an acute and burning problem in Pakistan. It has even become a cause of serious concern for both the government as well as for physicians, medical experts and patients. According to some polls, about 60 percent of PAKISTANI citizens fear that they are taking either counterfeit medicine or medicine of poor quality. According to the estimate of experts, the share of counterfeit medicine on the Pakistan market is a staggering 42-60% percent of the total production.
The lack of government public health financing (Pakistan is spending on an average a mere 0.5-0.8 per cent of the GNP on health) and the absence of a national health insurance programme. In spite of buying medicines from their own pockets, consumers are still victims of irrational drug use and fake medicines. This also illustrates that
Pakistan's national medicine policy has failed to achieve its public health objectives.
In Pakistan, both multinational and national pharmaceutical companies are heavily involved in the unethical marketing of medicines indirectly exploiting the consumers. Marketing incentives are so lucrative that many physicians are prescribing patients drugs which they really don't need. These medicines are posing an unnecessary risk to the health of the people.
properly-qualified doctors in the public system often illegally moonlight in private practices. Under-the-counter payments are also common, sometimes just to get care.
In Pakistan, a survey of 149 doctors, 100 medical information officers (sales representatives) and 99 medical store personnel, found that gifts may include included air conditioners, cars, cash, home appliances and domestic cattle. Murad M. Khan, professor & chairman of the department of psychiatry at Aga Khan University, describes the latest practice: For writing 200 prescriptions of a companys high-priced drug, a doctor is rewarded with the down payment on a brand new car
It also states that in Pakistan, 32 per cent of drugs sold by German pharmaceutical companies are irrational and 61 per cent of drugs were not even present on the WHO essential drug list. Some of the drugs that were sold in the country were harmful and have been banned in developed western nations or have no added therapeutic value. A European Union study states that 50 per cent of medicines available in Pakistan are counterfeit.
"It is not just a Pakistan problem.It should be considered not only in the light of the infliction of moral and economic damage. The question is about the security of the Pakistan population, our nation as a whole."
A recent study in the Journal of Tropical Medicine and International Health estimated that 86 percent of under-strength fakes analyzed in Kenya and Congo came from India and China
About 70 percent of counterfeit medicine comes from abroad, while 30 percent of it is produced and sold on the territory of the Pakistan. There has been much coverage by Western media over the last two years about the health risks posed by "Made in China" Vietnam, India, Combodia, Thailand, products, including Chinese export of counterfeit medicines. Chinese Vietnam, Indian, counterfeit medicines may have already caused hundredsif not thousandsof deaths outside of their countries. Less is known, however, harm of contaminated goods to the Chinese people Nigeria and Africa is paying every day. Vietnam, India, China steps being taken to regulate the industries.
Chinas foremost combatant against counterfeit medicine, Gao Jingde says that he has discovered through his investigations that two-thirds of China's drug stores sell counterfeit medicine.
China is, aside from criminality within the pharmaceutical industry, that the State Food and Drug Administration has shirked its responsibility of properly regulating the industry.Indeed, according to Gao, the governments usual response when he reported a counterfeit was paltry. A fine of 100 to 4,000 yuan ($15 to $580) would be levied against the responsible companies. For even a moderately sized pharmaceutical company, such a fine would amount to less than a slap on the wrist..
Some products in China have a counterfeit constituent of 50% to 85%
* Some 37% of antibiotics and anti-malarials on the WHO essential drugs list in Nigeria and Thailand are substandard
* A recent survey by the WHO of seven African countries found that between 20% and 90% of all anti-malarials failed quality testing
There was a programme called bad medicine on BBC channel, where in the drugs controller for Nigeria proved that 95% of drugs in nigeria are fake & 80% of them are being exported from india. These indian fake medicines are killing hundreds of innocents in nigeria & she is crusading to control to control it. pharma drugs mafia linked to india. She came over to india along with BBC correspondent & under- cover they went to greedy industrialists. The said industrialists- FAKE SPECIALISTS boasted how they fake the holograms , labels of big MNCs , how they add chalk powder , paracetamol to all tablets
Counterfeit medicines are on the rise worldwide, as criminals capitalize on the growing use of the Internet by consumers searching for inexpensive drugs.Seizures of bogus prescription medicines jumped 24% to 1,513 incidents in 2007, and illicit versions of 403 different prescription drugs were confiscated in 99 countries, according to the Pharmaceutical Security Institute, a Vienna, Virginia-group funded by 26 drug makers. The $3 billion (Rs12,870 crore) in counterfeit drugs seized include generic copies that violate patent laws and products that lack active chemical ingredients or contain improper dosages.
In the decade since Internet sites began selling illegal copies of Pfizer Inc.s erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, counterfeiters have diversified, marketing pills to treat heart disease, arthritis, asthma, AIDS and cancer, according to the institute, which has been monitoring product seizures since the group was formed in 2002.
Copies of 19 of the worlds 25 best-selling drugs were among those seized by industry security, customs agents and police last year at ports of entry, in free-trade zones or at illicit manufacturing and distribution sites, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Its a big issue, its a global issue, its an insidious issue, said John Lechleiter, Eli Lilly and Co.s president and chief executive officer, in an interview at his Indianapolis headquarters.
New York-based Pfizer, the worlds largest drug maker, estimates it may be losing sales of $2 billion a year in Viagra alone, given how much of the drugs active ingredient is produced in India and shipped abroad, says Rubie Mages, a company director of global anti-counterfeiting. Sales of the impotence drug in 2007 totalled $1.8 billion.
Oftentimes, the drugs that are being sold emanate from China, from Russia and from India, says Steven Rucker, an executive managing director of Kroll Inc., a New York security firm used by pharmaceutical companies to track down counterfeiters.
Fake versions of Pfizers Viagra and its impotence pill competitorsLevitra from Leverkusen, German-based Bayer AG and Schering-Plough Corp. of Kenilworth, New Jersey, and Cialis from Eli Lillyhave been traced to manufacturers in China and India
According to Interpol data, Vietnam ranks second in Southeast Asia in the quantity of counterfeit medicine in circulation, said an inspector of the HCM City Department of Health.
Largest quantity of counterfeit drugs in circulation, followed by Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), fake drugs account for 7-15% of the total quantity of medicines circulated in the market in developed countries and the percentage is 25% in developing ones.
In Vietnam an investigation shows that 64% of anti malarial tablets contained no active ingredient, which eventually led to the death of patients. In India 7% of medicines were found counterfeit and Indian companies were accused of exporting counterfeits to African markets.
In the first half of 2008, the HCM City Department of Health licenced more than 5,800 medicine-related businesses, including: 388 drug trading companies, 84 drug wholesale units, 3,356 drugstores, 460 drug agents of pharmaceutical companies, over 300 oriental medicine stores, and 105 pharmaceutical material trading firms. Meanwhile, the Departments Inspectorate has only four university-level pharmacists and only 12 of 24 districts in the city have pharmaceutical inspectors who are pharmacists of university level.
It goes without saying that decisive measures are urgently required and needed to tackle this problem.
"The protection of the health of citizens is the main task of the state,".. These are interrelated and mutually dependent tasks. Those who create underground illegal enterprises and who circulate such counterfeit medicine have to be strictly prosecuted. But so far in our budget we have lack of expenditures on the criminal and administrative expertise related to a circulation of counterfeit medicine in Pakistan. Punjab government Announced prosecution for the circulation of counterfeit medicine on a large scale.from last year December 2008 .Till now no big racket have been discovered yet.
"But GOP need to prosecute the representatives of those wholesale organizations who circulate such medicine as well as the producers of such medicine who are engaged in a criminal activity on a large scale.
"Punjab Government increases the punishment of such activities up to 10 years of imprisonment. And fine too"
The U.S. based Center for Medicines in the Public Interest predicts that counterfeit drug sales will reach $75 billion globally in 2010, an increase of more than 90 percent from 2005.
Most industrialized countries with effective regulatory systems and market control (e.g. U.S., most of the EU, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand) have a low proportion, i.e. less than 1 percent of market value. drug inspectors are fully aware of the locations where the manufacture of undesired medicines takes place and the medical stores where they are sold.
The problem of fake drugs has plagued our community for many years. Few crimes can be more horrendous than this one. Indirectly, this is murder in cold blood. The agony of suffering from the administration of fake drugs can only be understood by those who have been affected. Fake drugs not only take away precious lives, but also lead to the emergence of drug resistance. Unfortunately, our legal system is painfully tardy. As in other spheres, our socio-political environment has allowed the culprits to carry on with their nefarious activities with utter disregard for the law of the land. Hang a few and this menace will come to an end.
Despite being a serious health hazard, there has never been any concerted effort from all the stakeholders involved to counter this hazard. And that has continuously encouraged the culprits to profit from it.
Lack of infrastructure and manpower for the regulator, coupled with major inadequacies in the existing laws, make the problem a very complex one,see the role of pakistan drugs inspectors and drugs compaines is really ashmed full.
usman karim based in lahore pakistan lmno25@hotmail.com
The Pakistan Manual of Drug Laws, defines a counterfeit drug as "a drug, the label or outer packing of which is an imitation of, resembles or so resembles as to be calculated to deceive the label or outer packing of a drug manufacturer."
According to the World Health Organization, a counterfeit medicine is one, which is deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to identity and/or source. Counterfeit drugs may contain wrong active ingredients, wrong amounts of the ingredients or no active ingredients at all. Counterfeit drugs result in death or disability and are becoming leading causes of therapeutic failure and disease resistance
Diplomatic niceties meant that the main manufacturers, China and India, were not named.
Counterfeit drugs constitute 40 to 50 percent of all medicines available in Pakistan and according to the World Health Organization (WHO) Pakistanis spend 77 percent of their household health budgets on medicines half of which may be fake or unfit for human consumption
The Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufactures Association (PPMA) states that the rate of production of counterfeit drugs in the country is only 0.4 percent. What a Great joke with poor Nation? Pakistan is considered one of the 13 countries of the world where the manufacturing of counterfeit medicines is on the rise. The situation is alarming, as the country is also alleged as being a counterfeit hub- exporting counterfeit drugs to North America, Europe and Africa .
U.N. health and crime agencies say counterfeit drugs are killing people from China to Canada and they "promote the development of new strains of viruses, parasites and bacteria ... for example in the case of malaria or HIV.'' And in many countries their manufacture and distribution is not even illegal.
British House of Commons, a member of the British parliament Charles Walker identified Pakistan as a country where counterfeit medicines were produced
About 40 to 50 per cent of medicines being sold in the country were counterfeit, which might cause prolonged illness or even death of patients, According to The Centre for research and Security Studies of Pakistan in 2008. PMA Secretary General Dr Qaiser Sajjad that the government needs to seriously work to control the production and sale of counterfeit medicines in Pakistan, which is currently ranked 13th in the world for the practice.
Nine Drugs Courts has been established by the Federal Governement in pursuance of Section 31 of the Drugs Act 1976.
Counterfeiting is a reaction to the high drug prices imposed by pharmaceutical companies. This view holds that the solution would be to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry and impose strict price controls according to Noam Chomsky According to World Health Organisation estimates; fake medicines represent 10 per cent of the global pharmaceutical industry at some 45 billion euros and have started to penetrate drug markets in the developed world.
Without such reforms, the counterfeiters will continue to kill hundreds and thousands of people every year."
How duties push up the price of legal drugs Combined duties and taxes
Sierra Leone 40% Nigeria 34% Pakistan 33% Bangladesh 29% Jamaica 27% Morocco 25% Mexico 24% according to European Union
The problem of counterfeit medicine is an acute and burning problem in Pakistan. It has even become a cause of serious concern for both the government as well as for physicians, medical experts and patients. According to some polls, about 60 percent of PAKISTANI citizens fear that they are taking either counterfeit medicine or medicine of poor quality. According to the estimate of experts, the share of counterfeit medicine on the Pakistan market is a staggering 42-60% percent of the total production.
The lack of government public health financing (Pakistan is spending on an average a mere 0.5-0.8 per cent of the GNP on health) and the absence of a national health insurance programme. In spite of buying medicines from their own pockets, consumers are still victims of irrational drug use and fake medicines. This also illustrates that
Pakistan's national medicine policy has failed to achieve its public health objectives.
In Pakistan, both multinational and national pharmaceutical companies are heavily involved in the unethical marketing of medicines indirectly exploiting the consumers. Marketing incentives are so lucrative that many physicians are prescribing patients drugs which they really don't need. These medicines are posing an unnecessary risk to the health of the people.
properly-qualified doctors in the public system often illegally moonlight in private practices. Under-the-counter payments are also common, sometimes just to get care.
In Pakistan, a survey of 149 doctors, 100 medical information officers (sales representatives) and 99 medical store personnel, found that gifts may include included air conditioners, cars, cash, home appliances and domestic cattle. Murad M. Khan, professor & chairman of the department of psychiatry at Aga Khan University, describes the latest practice: For writing 200 prescriptions of a companys high-priced drug, a doctor is rewarded with the down payment on a brand new car
It also states that in Pakistan, 32 per cent of drugs sold by German pharmaceutical companies are irrational and 61 per cent of drugs were not even present on the WHO essential drug list. Some of the drugs that were sold in the country were harmful and have been banned in developed western nations or have no added therapeutic value. A European Union study states that 50 per cent of medicines available in Pakistan are counterfeit.
"It is not just a Pakistan problem.It should be considered not only in the light of the infliction of moral and economic damage. The question is about the security of the Pakistan population, our nation as a whole."
A recent study in the Journal of Tropical Medicine and International Health estimated that 86 percent of under-strength fakes analyzed in Kenya and Congo came from India and China
About 70 percent of counterfeit medicine comes from abroad, while 30 percent of it is produced and sold on the territory of the Pakistan. There has been much coverage by Western media over the last two years about the health risks posed by "Made in China" Vietnam, India, Combodia, Thailand, products, including Chinese export of counterfeit medicines. Chinese Vietnam, Indian, counterfeit medicines may have already caused hundredsif not thousandsof deaths outside of their countries. Less is known, however, harm of contaminated goods to the Chinese people Nigeria and Africa is paying every day. Vietnam, India, China steps being taken to regulate the industries.
Chinas foremost combatant against counterfeit medicine, Gao Jingde says that he has discovered through his investigations that two-thirds of China's drug stores sell counterfeit medicine.
China is, aside from criminality within the pharmaceutical industry, that the State Food and Drug Administration has shirked its responsibility of properly regulating the industry.Indeed, according to Gao, the governments usual response when he reported a counterfeit was paltry. A fine of 100 to 4,000 yuan ($15 to $580) would be levied against the responsible companies. For even a moderately sized pharmaceutical company, such a fine would amount to less than a slap on the wrist..
Some products in China have a counterfeit constituent of 50% to 85%
* Some 37% of antibiotics and anti-malarials on the WHO essential drugs list in Nigeria and Thailand are substandard
* A recent survey by the WHO of seven African countries found that between 20% and 90% of all anti-malarials failed quality testing
There was a programme called bad medicine on BBC channel, where in the drugs controller for Nigeria proved that 95% of drugs in nigeria are fake & 80% of them are being exported from india. These indian fake medicines are killing hundreds of innocents in nigeria & she is crusading to control to control it. pharma drugs mafia linked to india. She came over to india along with BBC correspondent & under- cover they went to greedy industrialists. The said industrialists- FAKE SPECIALISTS boasted how they fake the holograms , labels of big MNCs , how they add chalk powder , paracetamol to all tablets
Counterfeit medicines are on the rise worldwide, as criminals capitalize on the growing use of the Internet by consumers searching for inexpensive drugs.Seizures of bogus prescription medicines jumped 24% to 1,513 incidents in 2007, and illicit versions of 403 different prescription drugs were confiscated in 99 countries, according to the Pharmaceutical Security Institute, a Vienna, Virginia-group funded by 26 drug makers. The $3 billion (Rs12,870 crore) in counterfeit drugs seized include generic copies that violate patent laws and products that lack active chemical ingredients or contain improper dosages.
In the decade since Internet sites began selling illegal copies of Pfizer Inc.s erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, counterfeiters have diversified, marketing pills to treat heart disease, arthritis, asthma, AIDS and cancer, according to the institute, which has been monitoring product seizures since the group was formed in 2002.
Copies of 19 of the worlds 25 best-selling drugs were among those seized by industry security, customs agents and police last year at ports of entry, in free-trade zones or at illicit manufacturing and distribution sites, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Its a big issue, its a global issue, its an insidious issue, said John Lechleiter, Eli Lilly and Co.s president and chief executive officer, in an interview at his Indianapolis headquarters.
New York-based Pfizer, the worlds largest drug maker, estimates it may be losing sales of $2 billion a year in Viagra alone, given how much of the drugs active ingredient is produced in India and shipped abroad, says Rubie Mages, a company director of global anti-counterfeiting. Sales of the impotence drug in 2007 totalled $1.8 billion.
Oftentimes, the drugs that are being sold emanate from China, from Russia and from India, says Steven Rucker, an executive managing director of Kroll Inc., a New York security firm used by pharmaceutical companies to track down counterfeiters.
Fake versions of Pfizers Viagra and its impotence pill competitorsLevitra from Leverkusen, German-based Bayer AG and Schering-Plough Corp. of Kenilworth, New Jersey, and Cialis from Eli Lillyhave been traced to manufacturers in China and India
According to Interpol data, Vietnam ranks second in Southeast Asia in the quantity of counterfeit medicine in circulation, said an inspector of the HCM City Department of Health.
Largest quantity of counterfeit drugs in circulation, followed by Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), fake drugs account for 7-15% of the total quantity of medicines circulated in the market in developed countries and the percentage is 25% in developing ones.
In Vietnam an investigation shows that 64% of anti malarial tablets contained no active ingredient, which eventually led to the death of patients. In India 7% of medicines were found counterfeit and Indian companies were accused of exporting counterfeits to African markets.
In the first half of 2008, the HCM City Department of Health licenced more than 5,800 medicine-related businesses, including: 388 drug trading companies, 84 drug wholesale units, 3,356 drugstores, 460 drug agents of pharmaceutical companies, over 300 oriental medicine stores, and 105 pharmaceutical material trading firms. Meanwhile, the Departments Inspectorate has only four university-level pharmacists and only 12 of 24 districts in the city have pharmaceutical inspectors who are pharmacists of university level.
It goes without saying that decisive measures are urgently required and needed to tackle this problem.
"The protection of the health of citizens is the main task of the state,".. These are interrelated and mutually dependent tasks. Those who create underground illegal enterprises and who circulate such counterfeit medicine have to be strictly prosecuted. But so far in our budget we have lack of expenditures on the criminal and administrative expertise related to a circulation of counterfeit medicine in Pakistan. Punjab government Announced prosecution for the circulation of counterfeit medicine on a large scale.from last year December 2008 .Till now no big racket have been discovered yet.
"But GOP need to prosecute the representatives of those wholesale organizations who circulate such medicine as well as the producers of such medicine who are engaged in a criminal activity on a large scale.
"Punjab Government increases the punishment of such activities up to 10 years of imprisonment. And fine too"
The U.S. based Center for Medicines in the Public Interest predicts that counterfeit drug sales will reach $75 billion globally in 2010, an increase of more than 90 percent from 2005.
Most industrialized countries with effective regulatory systems and market control (e.g. U.S., most of the EU, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand) have a low proportion, i.e. less than 1 percent of market value. drug inspectors are fully aware of the locations where the manufacture of undesired medicines takes place and the medical stores where they are sold.
The problem of fake drugs has plagued our community for many years. Few crimes can be more horrendous than this one. Indirectly, this is murder in cold blood. The agony of suffering from the administration of fake drugs can only be understood by those who have been affected. Fake drugs not only take away precious lives, but also lead to the emergence of drug resistance. Unfortunately, our legal system is painfully tardy. As in other spheres, our socio-political environment has allowed the culprits to carry on with their nefarious activities with utter disregard for the law of the land. Hang a few and this menace will come to an end.
Despite being a serious health hazard, there has never been any concerted effort from all the stakeholders involved to counter this hazard. And that has continuously encouraged the culprits to profit from it.
Lack of infrastructure and manpower for the regulator, coupled with major inadequacies in the existing laws, make the problem a very complex one,see the role of pakistan drugs inspectors and drugs compaines is really ashmed full.
usman karim based in lahore pakistan lmno25@hotmail.com
