Medicines in a new and different class – Biologics require their own regulation

Presidential candidate Barack Obama recently announced a plan to give $6 billion a year in tax credits to small businesses to encourage them to provide health insurance to employees. According to Reuters, Obama would pay for this by “making so-called ‘biologic’ drugs easier to bring to market in generic form.” Read the original article

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EU Customs seized more than $1.4 billion in fake goods

A European Union annual report found customs officials last year seized more than 100 million pieces of fake goods, including counterfeit medicines, that had a street value of over $1.4 billion, much of it purchased on the internet.

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Check out this unusual scene in China

A steamroller crushing thousands of boxes of prescription medicines. Why? Despite looking very real, these drugs are counterfeit and dangerous. Globally, the threat of fake medicine is very real.

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Czech Police Find Hundreds of Thousands of Fake Pills

Czech police announced today that they busted an organized crime ring that had a factory that made “hundreds of thousands of [counterfeit] tablets.” The crime ring, composed of ex-athletes, body builders, fitness trainers and coaches, produced and sold counterfeit anabolic steroids and other hormone-based drugs, reports Czech Position. The police’s unit for combating organized crime,…

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Vietnamese Sentenced for Fake Medicine Sales

Two Vietnamese were sentenced to terms of up to three years imprisonment in Hanoi for distributing counterfeit medication. Nguyen Ba Hai and Hoang Thi Hong, 27 and 38, were sentenced by the Hanoi People’s Court on July 22, 2011 for selling fake ED medication, reports the Thanh Nien News. Hai confessed to buying fake medicine…

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Saving Newborn Lives in Nigeria

“When armed robbers point a gun at your head, they usually give you an option; they say ‘your money or your life.’ Sometimes, when you give them your money, they let you go, but drug counterfeiters do not give you that option. They take the little money that sometimes poor, desperate people have to enrich…

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Self-Sufficiency Key to Secure Medicine

Nigerian leader, Dr. Paul Orhii, discussed the difficulties of keeping the drug supply free from counterfeit medicines, including porous borders, lack of resources, and the dependence upon foreign medication for their own health.

In an interview with Winifred Ogbedo in magazine Leadership, Dr. Orhii, the director-general of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), discussed the strides he’s been able to make to improve the safety of medication available to Nigerians, and the biggest obstacles to overcome, notably the development of domestically controlled medicine manufacturing.

Dr. Orhii is seeking to develop a domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing business because he says, “it’s a national security issue,” with 70% of essential medications imported from out of country.

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Counterfeit Drugs Removed from Manilla Shelves

A test-buy conducted by Filipino National Bureau of Investigation agents determined counterfeit medicines were being mass distributed by a drug store chain throughout The Philippines.   Agents conducted raids of Sincere Drug Store branches and its warehouse facility in Bacolod City in June, acting on complaints that counterfeits of medications produced by legitimate Filipino manufacturers…

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