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The fight against counterfeit drugs – The situation today

According to WHO, counterfeit pharmaceuticals are those that are deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to their identity or source.  This may concern a product that: 
• actually contains the listed active ingredient (patent infringement)
• contains a different active ingredient than the one listed
• contains no active ingredient at all (glucose, talc)
• contains insufficient quantities of the active ingredient
• is presented in counterfeit packaging (infringement of registered trademarks)  

The figures most commonly cited by international organizations indicate that counterfeiting concerns, on average, 10% of the global pharmaceutical market, although the figure may reach up to 70% in certain African or Eastern European countries. According to WHO, counterfeit medicines may be responsible for millions of deaths worldwide.

Counterfeit pharmaceuticals give rise to multiple risks because they:

• endanger patients' health;
• infringe on intellectual property rights;
• cause direct loss or harm for research;
• feed a parallel and freeloading economy, which counters the rules of sustainable development (endangering safety, hygiene, the environment, ethics, human rights, etc.).