FocusGlobal counterfeit drug epidemic spreads

27 September 2007 21:06  [Source: ICIS news]

By Clay Boswell

NEW YORK (ICIS news)--Counterfeit drugs continue to be big business, not only in the Third World, where the desperately poor make easy prey, but also, increasingly, in wealthy nations accustomed to secure drug supplies, according to industry and government officials.

The value of the global market for counterfeit drugs was about $39bn (€28bn) in 2005, according to Peter Pitts, president of the New York-based Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.

However, the market is growing at 13% annually, twice the rate of the legitimate pharmaceutical market, according to Pitts. By 2010, trade in counterfeits will reach $75bn.

China, Pitts pointed out, has played a central role in the production of counterfeits, and its own population has not been spared the effects.

“It is estimated that in China between 200,000 and 300,000 people die each year due to counterfeit or substandard medicine,” he said. “And these are reported cases: the true number of cases is likely to be far higher.”

Only two weeks ago, several members of one global counterfeiting ring were successfully prosecuted in the UK for their role in what the UK Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) called the country’s biggest counterfeit medicines conspiracy ever.

From 2002 to 2005, the gang had smuggled millions of dollars worth of fake Viagra, Propecia and Cialis into and out of the UK. The profits were enormous, the pills being bought from Chinese and Indian suppliers for as little as £0.25 ($0.50, €0.36) and marked up to as much as £15.

Earlier this year, a 58-year-old Canadian woman died after taking counterfeit anti-anxiety drugs and sedatives she had obtained from an online pharmacy that she believed was in Canada. In fact, the pharmacy was in eastern Europe, and the pills contained high levels of aluminium, arsenic and other metals, which killed her.

Such events have been rare in North America and western Europe, but elsewhere in the world, where the drug supply is poorly regulated, such deaths are an everyday occurrence, often because the drugs are useless.

In a particularly notorious 1995 incident, 2,500 people died when more than 50,000 people were inoculated with counterfeit vaccines during a meningitis epidemic in Niger.

Pharmaceutical companies have tried to attack the problem by making their products more difficult to copy.

However, as Billy Tauzin, president and chief executive of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) told the US Senate last spring, “packaging and labelling, and even counterfeit resistant technologies, can themselves be counterfeited, often within 12-18 months.”

Only by implementing safeguards throughout the distribution system is it possible to protect the integrity of the drug supply chain, according to PhRMA.

Even now, however, the paper pedigree requirements dictated by the Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987 remain incompletely implemented, while electronic track-and-trace systems are still several years away.

The number of counterfeit drugs cases opened by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) steadily rises each year. In the first half of 2007, US Customs seized $10m in counterfeit pharmaceuticals.

For more analysis on the issue of counterfeit drugs, see the 1 October issue of ICIS Chemical Business

($1.00 = €0.71 = £0.50)

ICIS Copyright © Reed Business Information 2009

Author: Clay Boswell
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