Pharmaceutical News 2.0

Thirty thousand packs of counterfeit life-saving drugs may have been consumed by National Health Service (NHS) patients, including drugs used to treat prostate cancer, strokes, heart conditions and schizophrenia.

When: June 2007

Where: The United Kingdom

How: According to reports by the BBC, reputable UK wholesalers were “duped by sophisticated counterfeits.”

Who: MHRA; National Health Service; Orient Pacific International; Pfizer

Additional details

In June 2007, the Medicines Health products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued four Class One emergency recalls on the following life saving medicines:

• Casodex – used to treat prostate cancer
• Plavix – used to treat strokes and heart conditions
• Zyprexa – used to treat schizophrenia

A UK wholesaler spotted discrepancies in the packaging of drugs bought in Europe. A former investigator told the BBC that drugs from other parts of Europe can be purchased at lower prices, and that the UK can import the drugs from the EU under an arrangement known as a parallel trade—after which point the drugs are repackaged with English language packaging. The investigator said that the three drugs “would have pretended to be medicines that were destined for other European markets, in the case of Plavix, they would be in a French language pack.”

The counterfeit packaging wasn’t found until the imports were already in the supply chain, distributed to chemists, doctors and hospitals, and dispensed to patients, according to the BBC.

The head of enforcement at the MHRA said they had seized 40,000 of the estimated 70,000 packs of counterfeit drugs, but issued the recall because 30,000 packs were unaccounted for. The 30,000 missing packs are assumed to have been consumed by patients. It is unknown which patients consumed the counterfeit drugs, and thus it is unknown how many patients were made ill or died as a result of ingesting the counterfeits.

While there is no way to determine which patients received which drugs, the same batch numbers from the drugs were traced to the man at the center of an international fake drugs ring, Kevin Xu, a citizen of the People’s Republic of China and owner of Orient Pacific International.

In August 2007, Xu was indicted for distributing counterfeit and misbranded pharmaceuticals in the United States via the internet, at which time he also faced allegations for introducing counterfeit drugs into the UK supply chain. Xu was convicted and sentenced to six and a half years in prison in January 2009.

Read more about how thousands of fake pills for very serious conditions made it into the UK supply.

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BEIJING, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) — China’s drug watchdog promised to investigate how alleged counterfeit pills, which were made in China, ended up being used by the British National Health Service (NHS).

“We will conduct relevant investigations and will surely punish companies or individuals who manufacture fake pharmaceuticals for export”, Yan Jiangying, spokeswoman with State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) said on Wednesday.

“If we find any clues of illegal medicine production for export, we will track them down,” the spokeswoman told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

A London-based newspaper, The Guardian, said on its website Jan. 4 that “counterfeiting gangs based in China” produced some eight million fake pills which went to NHS patients last year.

Chinese police authorities recently traveled to London to discuss the growing problem, The Guardian said.

The information, however, cannot be confirmed at this time.

Yan reiterated China’s resolution to crack-down on importing or exporting fake medicines. She emphasized that the government adopted international principles and practices to regulate the issue.

According to Chinese laws, medicine exporters should acquire government-issued certificates to run their business. Exported pills should be accompanied by permission papers for sales in accordance with requirements of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Read the rest of this article on fake pills in Britain.

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They were sent in three shipments by a company based in Mumbai and were bound for two companies in a western African country.

The biggest seizure ever of counterfeit medical pills in Europe occurred in Belgium on Oct. 2. Customs authorities at the Brussels airport have seized over two million counterfeit medical pills from India which were bound for Africa.

Blister packs of the fake medications — copies of Tramal, a strong analgesic made by German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal, and Swiss-based Roche’s antimalarial treatment Fansidar — were discovered in large bags, the customs service said.

They were sent in three shipments by a company based in Mumbai and were bound for two companies in a western African country.

“To our knowledge, this is the biggest seizure of counterfeit medicine ever carried out in Europe,” Lieven Muylaert, spokesman for the Customs and Excise department said, adding that he could not immediately evaluate the cargo’s worth on the open market.

Customs officers’ suspicions were aroused first because the pills were not transported in boxes, and then by spelling mistakes on the packaging.

According to World Health Organization estimates, fake medicines represent 10% of the global pharmaceutical industry at some 45 billion euros (62 billion euros) and have started to penetrate drug markets in the developed world.

The amount of counterfeit medical drugs intercepted at EU borders rose 51% last year after soaring by 400% in 2006.

In France such seizures, mainly of Viagra from India and on its way to Africa or Latin America, shot up be 31% last year.

Read more about this seizure of fake pills in Belgian.

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