Global Forum seeks treaty to fight counterfeiting

The Global Forum, which was organized by Reconnaissance International, is the only congress in the world that brings together all the stakeholders from developing and industrialized countries.

Attendees at the Forum included government regulatory authorities, pharmaceutical companies, patient groups, health professional groups and other stakeholders in the fight against counterfeit medicines.

The Forum called on manufacturers, supply chain stakeholders, patients and health professionals, as well as regulators and law enforcement, to mobilize against fake medicines.

Dr Lembit Rago of the World Health Organization and Dr Dora Akunyili, director general of the Nigerian National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), called for an international framework convention to establish minimum standards and to harmonize international regulations to facilitate the fight against counterfeits.

The problem is compounded in Europe, where free trade in pharmaceutical products exists. Governments can and do set different pricing, leading to hugely divergent prices between countries such as Greece and Sweden. This encourages parallel imports, which in turn allows counterfeit products to be introduced.

“There is a need for stakeholder accountability, uniform systems and regulation leading to accountable supply chain management by all players delivering medicines to patients in Europe,” said Julian Mount, senior director of European trade at Pfizer. “This means pan-European legislation, regulatory coordination, appropriate technologies and the need to better enforce the repackaging of medicines to ensure patient safety and medicine integrity.”

The same could apply to other regions of the world, notably Africa, according to participants from Nigeria and Ghana.

With increasing access to potentially lethal medicines at cheap prices over the Internet, Jim Thomson, CEO of the Centre for Mental Health in the UK, warned of the “loaded gun” that fake drugs represent. “Potent substances are freely available on the Internet and can be ordered easily without any prescription and any authentication of sources, making the public vulnerable to health hazards and public health vulnerable to growing antimicrobial and drug resistance.

“Because technology has advanced so quickly, it is possible to imagine a diagnostic kit that is sold or preferably supplied at the manufacturer’s expense with a prescription drug so that patients can test the drug for authenticity before they take it,” he continued.