Fake medicines find their way to licensed drug outlets, an official of the Food and Drugs Administration on Thursday bared.
Nemia Getes, chief of the Regulation Division 1 of the FDA, said a number of licensed community drugstores buy fake medicines from peddlers at a cheaper price.
Aside from peddlers, Getes also revealed that counterfeit drugs are also sourced out from licensed distributors.
“We are telling them to give us the identity of the peddlers but instead of pointing who the peddlers are, they would rather want to suffer the penalties,” Getes said at a forum on fake medicines sponsored by the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines and the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines.
She said during inspections conducted by the FDA, some drugstores fail to produce a copy of the official invoices of drugs sold in their outlets.
“Peddlers do not issue official invoices and under the counterfeit law, drugs should come with official invoices,” she said.
Getes said drug outlets found violating Republic Act 8203 or the Special Law on Counterfeit Drugs face both administrative and criminal sanctions that include imprisonment of up to 10 years and fine of up to P500,000.
Despite the government’s stringent campaign against the proliferation of fake medicines, Getes admitted that there is no one convicted yet of violating the law on counterfeit drugs.
According to Gen. Felizardo Serapio, Jr, Executive Director of the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime, the Philippines remains as one of the countries in Southeast Asia that is at the “receiving end” of fake medicines.
“It is possible that sellers of fake medicines use the southern backdoor route in Mindanao. Our concern now is to find out the level of production and distribution of counterfeit drugs here because I have to admit, we do not have data on this,” Serapio said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Asia has the biggest trade in counterfeit drugs.
A 2005 US FDA study estimates that worldwide sales of fake drugs exceed $ 3.5 billion a year.
Catherine Dauphin, Essential Medicines and Pharmaceutical Policies Technical Officer of the WHO, said counterfeiting is prevalent in regions where regulatory and enforcement systems for medicines are weakest.
According to Scott Davis, Senior Regional Director for Global Security of drug manufacturer Pfizer, Inc., the selling of counterfeit drugs has reached the Internet.
“In developing countries like the Philippines, as people are getting access to the Internet, they also get access to counterfeit medicines,” he said.
“Fake pharmacies online price their ‘products’ lower than the legitimate pharmacies to capture consumers,” he added.
Dauphin said in over 50 percent of cases, medicines purchased over the Internet from illegal sites have been found to be counterfeit.
Drugs are considered counterfeit when they are substandard or they have the correct ingredients but not the right amount, and when they are falsely packaged.
Dauphin said fake medicines could cause treatment failure and even death.
