News Coverage
The Partnership for Safe Medicines has been publishing information about the counterfeit drug problem around the world for more than a decade. With experts leading the organization and a committed and passionate set of writers and editors, our content is more in-depth than many other sources, which simply copy links to the news from other websites.
The Food and Drugs Board, FDB, is considering the introduction of a new technology that will detect fake drug products from genuine ones. The technology will indicate codes on the products which will be verified later from the manufacturers. The Acting Deputy Chief Executive of the Board, Rev. Jonathan Martey, announced this in Accra at…
Partnership for Safe Medicines shares expertise with leaders to combat contraband and counterfeit drugs.
ACCRA, Ghana (Sept. 9, 2008) – To combat the increasing amounts of contraband and counterfeit drugs threatening public health, West African government officials, business leaders, and non-profit organizations gathered today for the Stakeholder Forum on Safe Medicines in Accra, Ghana. The Partnership for Safe Medicines, a coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to protecting consumers from counterfeit medicines, helped lead a discussion about how the region can work together to address this important health problem.
Here at the Partnership for Safe Medicines, one of our core principles for drug safety is the need to unify in the fight against counterfeit drugs. This week, we saw progress.
Why buy from a store when you can shop on the Internet? Unfortunately, there are numerous illegal Web sites that will sell you contaminated or counterfeit drugs, unapproved products, the wrong product, or simply take your money and never deliver anything in return.
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a consumer alert warning patients that two Baltimore pharmacies may have received either expired or possibly counterfeit drugs. Earlier this year, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo initiated legal action against CVS and Rite Aid pharmacies after a statewide investigation found it had sold expired products, including over-the-counter medications.
Botox treatment is one of the fastest-growing cosmetic procedures on the market today. With the promise to eliminate wrinkles and fine lines, more and more baby boomers are turning to this product to fight the signs of aging. However, in addition to battling wrinkles, the makers of Botox now find themselves fighting the illicit business of counterfeit drugs.
Earlier this week, I talked about India's opposition to IMPACT's proposed definition of a counterfeit medicine. Indian "experts" claimed it would hurt their generic drug industry's exports, and I asked just who these "experts" were protecting if the IMPACT's focus was only non-legitimate producers.
Often understanding a problem begins with a definition. The World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), meets each May to discuss public health issues and determine future WHO policies. This year, WHO's constituted International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (IMPACT) introduced a resolution to update WHO's definition of a counterfeit medicine. IMPACT proposed changing the definition from "deliberately and fraudulently" mislabeling a medicine's identity and source to the "false representation" of a medical product's identity, history or source.