More than two dozen of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies have agreed to provide funding and other support to Interpol's battle against counterfeit prescription drugs, the international police agency said Tuesday.
Interpol's newly created Pharmaceutical Crime Program aims to help health
agencies, police and customs bureaus in countries around the globe stem the
supply of bogus brand-name and generic medicines, as well as identify and
dismantle the organized crime rings distributing them. Those rings, which operate across borders, are raking in billions of
dollars every year, costing legitimate drugmakers a small fortune in lost
sales. Meanwhile patients who unknowingly take counterfeit drugs often are
poisoned or get sicker because they're not receiving what the doctor
prescribed. Experts estimate hundreds of thousands of people around the world
die because of counterfeit medicines each year.
The pharmaceutical companies have pledged a total of (EURO)4.5 million, or
nearly $5.9 million, over three years to help Interpol with efforts including
training local law enforcement officials on investigative procedures, evidence
handling and how to better work with partners outside their countries.
Interpol also will help those authorities build up their infrastructure and
target enforcement actions against crime rings that make and sell fake drugs,
and also divert medication illegally to countries where it's not approved. "We will develop a program according to what is best for the
international community and what will save lives," Aline Plancon, head of
Interpol's counterfeiting and pharmaceutical crime program, told The Associated
Press in an exclusive interview.
"It's been difficult for us as Interpol to sustain our
activities" against counterfeiting over the years, she said, because the
agency's limited resources also are needed for areas the international
community sees as more serious crimes. Those include human trafficking,
narcotics dealing, terrorism and money laundering.
Besides the financial support, the pharmaceutical companies, most of which
spend millions on their own investigations to fight counterfeiting of their
medicines, will step up sharing with Interpol the intelligence they uncover. Plancon said her agency, based in Lyon, France, plans to better coordinate
its work and collaborate with its member countries. Interpol also will run
pilot projects, experimenting with new strategies to find ways to be more
effective.
The industry support "forms a bridge between the public and private
sectors and will assist Interpol and each of its 190 member countries to more
effectively tackle the problem of medical product counterfeiting,"
Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said in a statement.
The World Health Organization estimates sales of medicines that are
counterfeit, contaminated or otherwise illegal total $430 billion a year.
In developing countries, up to 50 percent of the drug supply may be fake.
That's many times more than in developed countries, where most potentially
dangerous fake drugs are sold through rogue Internet pharmacies, but
counterfeit drugs increasingly are getting into the supply of pharmacies and
hospitals.
In the U.S., for example, three times in the last year counterfeit versions
of the Roche Group cancer drug Avastin have infiltrated the wholesale supply
and been sold to cancer clinics and hospitals. An unknown amount of those fakes
was administered to patients. And in Pakistan last year, 109 heart patients
died after taking counterfeit medicine.
The 29 companies supporting the effort include Amgen Inc., AstraZeneca PLC,
Eisai Co., GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly and Co., Merck
& Co., Novartis,AG, Pfizer Inc., Roche Group and Sanofi SA.
John Lechleiter, chairman of the trade group Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America and CEO of Lilly, said Monday that the new program
will supplement Interpol's existing efforts. "Counterfeiting activity is evolving so rapidly" and becoming
more common, he said.
As a result, one thrust of the program will be to try to more quickly spot
new trends in which drugs are being counterfeited, where the crime rings are
based and where they are distributing fake medicines, Lechleiter said. "This is really meant to cement some of these efforts together,"
he said. "After the initial (three-year) period, depending on the results,
we can certainly extend that out."
Ζητήστε το στα κεντρικά
βιβλιοπωλεία ή δώστε την παραγγελία σας τώρα…