All Posts Tagged With: "fake medicine"
Getting Real About Fakes: Fake Medicine and Movies
If companies want to cut into sales of counterfeit products, they need to understand why consumers buy them in the first place
By PEGGY E. CHAUDHRY And STEPHEN A. STUMPF
As the counterfeit trade booms, companies are rolling out massive campaigns to get people to stop buying fakes. But the messages they use are often off the mark.
Companies have tried everything from threatening prosecution to linking phony products with organized crime. But marketers often don’t pay attention to what actually drives people in particular markets to buy counterfeits and what messages will actually work to curb demand of fake goods.
Companies, for instance, might roll out ads in a country stressing that fake products are of poor quality. But those ads might ignore the fact that local consumers have little disposable income and consider knockoffs a bargain—so they are willing to accept a price-quality trade-off. A better approach might be to stress that the phony goods, such as fake cigarettes, are funding terrorism or, in the case of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, are actually killing people.
To figure out how companies can improve their antipiracy marketing, we surveyed consumers in five large markets—Brazil, Russia, India, China and the U.S.—to see what would make them opt for knockoffs. Then we used that information to figure out what messages might get people to stop buying the illegitimate goods.
WHY CONSUMERS BUY
We presented consumers in each market with five possible motivations for buying counterfeits in two categories—movies and drugs—and asked them to rank the factors on a seven-point scale of importance. Here’s what they said about each.
1. Quality and performance. Consumers would buy a fake if they thought it was just as good as a legitimate product.
Only U.S. consumers ranked this as an important factor that would influence them. Elsewhere, this attribute was just "somewhat" important—and Russian consumers ranked it not important at all. Astonishingly, consumers in these country markets valued the quality of the fake medicine less than they did factors such as reduced price and availability.
On the other hand, the quality of bootleg movies was ranked as very important for Russian, Brazilian and Chinese consumers, and less so for people in the U.S. and India.
2. Cost. Consumers would buy a fake because they cannot afford a genuine product.
Not surprisingly, almost all consumers ranked this as a very important motivation for pursuing fake drugs and bootleg movies alike. The two exceptions: Chinese consumers said this factor was only somewhat important when it came to drugs; U.S. consumers said the same about movies.
3. Sentiment. Consumers would buy a fake because they do not like the big businesses that make the authentic products.
We expected some resentment here, since drugs and movies are usually produced by large corporations, and the people who buy counterfeits may believe that the industry is price-gouging consumers. But only in China did consumers express disapproval of the large movie studios as a significant motivator for buying bootlegs. And only U.S. consumers showed an anti-big-business sentiment for both the movie and drug industries.
Their Brazilian, Russian and Indian counterparts did not concur, and rated this as an unimportant justification.
4. Ethics. Consumers would buy a fake because they do not think it is illegal or immoral to do so.
In this area, consumers had very different attitudes about movies and drugs.
In Brazil, India and the U.S., consumers said that consumption of fake pharmaceuticals was an unethical behavior. In Russia and China, it was not important at all—in effect, consumers would buy the fake pharmaceuticals even if they realized it was an immoral or illegal act.
With movies, on the other hand, consumers in all markets but Brazil said that ethical behavior was unimportant when it came to obtaining counterfeit movies. (In Brazil, it was just somewhat unimportant.) These consumers simply do not see bootlegged movies as illegal or morally wrong, perhaps because of the ease and anonymity of Internet downloads and the widespread consumer acceptance of obtaining fake movies. In our survey, 50% of 1,910 consumers readily admitted to obtaining a bootleg movie.
5. Ease. Consumers would buy a fake because it is easy to obtain.
As with ethics, this factor brought up a big divide between movies and drugs. The ease of obtaining fake movies was a very important motivation in each market. However, with drugs, ease was an important factor only in the U.S., just somewhat significant in Brazil and India, and not significant at all in China and Russia.
Consumers, in other words, face different degrees of easy market access to counterfeit drugs and may pursue counterfeit drugs even if they are tougher to obtain.
Read the rest of this article on counterfeit products and fake medicine on the Wall Street Journal Web site.
Fake Medicine Business in India - Part 3
Watch this video on fake medicine .
WEST AFRICA: Tracking fake medicine, dirty money, siphoned oil
DAKAR, 8 July 2009 (IRIN) - Contraband trafficking threatens rule of law, democracy and the health of people throughout West Africa, a region that offers criminals “resources, a strategic location, weak governance and an endless source of foot soldiers who see few viable alternatives to a life in crime,” said UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Costa.
Illegal income from trafficking rivals West African countries’ entire GDPs, fuels conflict and corruption and spawns disease, according to the UN crime agency’s recent trafficking threat assessment.
UNODC measured the flows of cocaine through the region, women from West Africa to Europe, oil from Nigeria, cigarettes from Europe and Asia to West and North Africa, counterfeit medicines from Asia to West Africa, small arms to West Africa, toxic waste from Europe to West Africa and would-be migrants from West Africa to Europe, concluding that smuggled oil generates the most money – more than US$1 billion annually–and is the greatest rule-of-law challenge in the region. Smuggled oil “directly destabilises the most powerful economy in the region [Nigeria], with implications far beyond the Niger Delta,” says the report.
On the corrosive nature of smuggling profits, the report noted: “This money accrues to law-breakers and corrupt officials who may have an interest in maintaining state weakness…Where the rule of law is weak, the lawless prosper, and they further cultivate the disorder that provides their best defence.”
Antonio Mazzitelli, the director of UNODC’s West African office in Senegal, told IRIN illegal money undermines order. “Those with access to funds in West Africa have enormous power to corrupt. It is not alarmist to link trafficking to political instability.”
Citing recent military takeovers in Mauritania and Guinea, assassinations in Guinea Bissau of the president and chief of armed forces and a constitution controversy in Niger that the president’s political opponents have labelled a coup attempt, Mazzitelli told IRIN the region has political tensions that are easily exploited by large sums of cash from criminal activity.
While Mazzitelli said that forces other than contraband contribute to breakdowns in constitutional order in West Africa, “illicit revenues complicate the clean-up and can worsen already fragile states.”
While the UN estimates the flow of cocaine in West Africa has dropped by half in the last two years, it maintains some 20 tons are still smuggled through the region each year, with a street value of about $1 billion.
Read the rest of this article on fake medicine in West Africa.
New tools to fight fake medicines
New technologies can help African countries identify counterfeit or substandard drugs, says director of Africa Fighting Malaria Roger Bate.
Poor quality medicines are pervasive across Africa. The WHO reports that more than 30 per cent of medicines on sale in many African countries are counterfeit, with some pills containing nothing more than chalk or water.
In last month’s African Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, my research colleagues and I report that 41–47 per cent of antimalarial, antibiotic and antimycobacterial drugs sampled from pharmacies in five African countries and in India failed at least one quality test. [1]
Some drugs fail quality tests because they have been stored and transported inappropriately. Vaccines, antibiotics and antimalarials degrade when exposed to long periods of humidity, temperature variations and sunlight, and anecdotal reports suggest that many developing-world distributors and pharmacies lack adequate storage facilities.
Other substandard drugs come from sloppy manufacturing or outright faking.
Naming and shaming fakers
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reports that between 39 and 81 per cent of all counterfeit drugs seized by European Union officials from 2005–2007 originated in China or India. But a wholesale ban on products from these countries would be counterproductivebecause China and India also produce many good-quality, low-cost generic drugs.
African countries must be able to assess which producers and distributors are to blame and impose selective embargoes on them. Nigeria provides a good model. Nearly a decade ago, Nigerian health authorities indicated that more than 50 per cent of drugs in the country were fake or adulterated. But a rigorous anticounterfeiting campaign — introducing stiffer penalties and banning several dozen Chinese and Indian companies — has reduced this number to 10–16 per cent.
If more African countries can name and shame producers of poor quality and counterfeit drugs, India’s federal government, which is itself trying to combat fake drugs, will have more political ammunition to crack down on bad firms and their state-level sponsors.
To do so, African countries must differentiate between acceptable and counterfeit, or substandard, products — no easy task, given the growing sophistication of counterfeiters. But new technologies can help.
Detection devices
The German Pharma Health Fund’s ‘Minilab’ uses thin layer chromatography, disintegration and simple dye tests to help weed out the worst-quality products. Generally, a product will ‘pass’ the Minilab test if it contains 80 per cent or more of the labelled active ingredient. The system is effective and relatively cheap, costing just under US$10,000 for basic equipment, training and materials. But it does require potable water, reliable electricity and an air-conditioned room for testing. The US government and other donors have helped deploy more than 300 Minilabs in over 70 countries in the past decade. Tanzania has set up over 20 donated Minilabs across the country and health officials say they’re working well in routing out fake drugs.
Read the rest of this article on identifying fake medicine in Africa.
China blacklists 74 websites for selling fake traditional Chinese medicine
BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) — China’s State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (SATCM) on Tuesday blacklisted 74 websites for selling fake Chinese herbal medicine.
Names of those sites have been made public on SATCM’s website at www.satcm.gov.cn.
Consumers are warned of buying any type of medicine from organizations such as the International Diabetes Institute of Genetic Engineering (www.010gbw.com), the China Research Center for Chinese Medicine (www.gxykf8.cn) and the China Cardiovascular Research Institute at (www.gxy007.cn).
Drugs sold on those websites claimed to be able to cure high blood pressure, skin diseases, diabetes and tumors.
SATCM has reported the 74 websites to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for further investigation. Those sites could be shut down.
As of now, they are still open.
Only one man, from the Diabetes Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Traditional Medicine website called Xinhua back. However, he hung up when he was asked about medicines for sale.
Yan Jiangying, spokeswoman with the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), said only those sites with the SFDA license of Internet medicine business can sell over-the-counter (OTC) drugs to individuals.
"So far, only ten websites across China have been issued with the license," she said.
Read the rest of this article on fake medicine in China.
Men Ignorant About True Risk Of Fake Medicine
New research released today (12 November) highlights the risk men are taking by purchasing counterfeit medicines. The ‘Cracking Counterfeit’ report commissioned by Pfizer reveals one in ten men interviewed - which would equate to more than 335,931 men living in major cities alone - admit to purchasing prescription only medicines without a prescription.1* ,2
Half (50%) of the men who have purchased medicine without a prescription have done so via the internet - a worrying statistic when you factor in that 90% of all medicines sold on the internet are thought to be fake.1** ,3
The reality is that counterfeit medicine can damage one’s health, and in some cases cause death. 4 Counterfeit medicine can contain high levels of toxic solvents5 for example, rat poison has been found in a counterfeit blood pressure lowering treatment, while boric acid and lead based road paint have both been found in a counterfeit medicine used to ease severe pain.5
The study also highlights the ignorance amongst men about which medicines actually require a prescription - only 40% of the men interviewed knew that erectile dysfunction medicine was in fact legally available only with a prescription.1**
The report also illustrates just how big the counterfeit medicine market is - with men potentially pouring more than £10 million into the counterfeit medicine market annually.1*, 2
The ‘Cracking Counterfeit’ report reveals:
– 68% of male respondents suspect ingredients found in counterfeit medicine to be very different from authentic medicines.1**
– 37% of men cited convenience and speed as the key reasons why they purchase medicine without prescription.1**
– The majority (60%) of the men who have bought medicine without prescription admit that if there was a possibility their medicine was counterfeit, it would have a great impact on their likelihood to purchase.1**
– Almost half (45%) of men purchasing without a prescription agreed that it was easy to get hold of.1**
Dr David Gillen, Pfizer’s Medical Director said: "Men bypassing the health system to purchase medicines is a growing problem in the UK, particularly relating to the increased availability of counterfeit medicines. These new findings show that men are not only often ignorant about what medicine actually requires a prescription but worryingly they know buying medicine from illicit sources might be harmful but convenience and anonymity often outweigh their fear levels."
"Today, 12% of UK men like to gamble online.6 Almost the same proportion, 11%, may be literally gambling on life through purchasing potentially counterfeit medicine.1* The findings paint an interesting picture and help us to further educate the public around the risks of purchasing medicine through unregulated sources, ultimately reducing exposure to counterfeit medicine."
Leading media medic Dr Mark Porter, who is supporting Pfizer’s campaign, said: "I can see why some people might consider buying prescription medicines online from unregulated ‘pharmacies’ - it’s convenient, relatively anonymous and often cheaper - but they shouldn’t. Any apparent benefits are more than outweighed by the risks of ending up with counterfeit medicines. Fakes that are unlikely to contain what they are supposed to, and which often contain chemicals they shouldn’t. At best they are useless, and at worst potentially lethal."
Read more about the dangers men face when purchasing fake medicine .
China Promises Crackdown on ‘Fake’ Medicine, Products
China has promised to pursue product pirates identified by U.S. authorities in a new effort to stamp out its thriving counterfeit industry, the head of the U.S. customs agency said Friday.
The agreement comes amid mounting concern that Chinese pirates are endangering public safety in the United States and elsewhere by selling fake medicine and other goods.
China accounted for about 80 percent of the 14,775 shipments of counterfeit goods seized at U.S. ports last year, said W. Ralph Basham, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Under a memorandum of cooperation signed this week, U.S. Customs will provide China with information on the source of seized goods, and Beijing will report back within 90 days on the status of efforts to track down the counterfeiters, Basham told reporters.
"We’ve got to start dealing with the source of the problem. We can’t expect to rely upon interdiction to be our tool in order to stop these products," Basham said.
China has long been the world’s leading source of illegally copied goods ranging from designer clothes to movies and music. But concern about possible danger to the public has risen following the discovery of a toxic chemical in Chinese-made toothpaste.
Read the rest of this article on China’s efforts to fight fake medicine and other fake products.
Fake Medicines ‘A Growing Menace’
The European Union must put tougher measures in place to stamp out the growing problem of trading in counterfeit medicines, a report warns.
Professor David Taylor, of the University of London School of Pharmacy, said the problem had been concentrated in the developing world.
But the global nature of the drugs industry meant patients everywhere were now potentially at risk.
The UK regulator said a vigorous system of checks was already in place.
Some counterfeit medicines have been found to contain toxic substances, such as anti-freeze. Some have small amounts of the active substance, others none at all.
Professor Taylor, whose report is launched on Wednesday at the House of Commons, said increased rationing of drugs could play into the counterfeiters’ hands.
Internet problem
He said: "Compared to the harm done by medicines counterfeiting in Africa and Asia, Europe is relatively safe.
"But there are growing risks, which will get worse if - for example - people believe that they cannot get new medicines that may benefit them for conditions such as cancer, dementia or influenza from publicly funded services."
World Health Organization statistics indicate 30% of medicines supplied in developing countries are fake.
In East European countries like Russia the proportion is 10%, while in wealthier areas like the UK it less than 1%.
Many of these have been purchased via the internet, but the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is currently investigating three cases of fake treatments being supplied via the legal NHS medicines supply chain.
Professor Taylor’s report calls for stronger legal penalties for medicine counterfeiting, and better controls over internet pharmacies, and entrepreneurs who trade in medicines.
He said the present system encouraged traders to buy medicines in countries where they are relatively cheap, and sell them on elsewhere at a profit.
While this was not illegal in itself, the fact that it was very difficult to monitor made it potentially attractive to counterfeiters.
Read the rest of this article on the growing problem of fake medicines .
Fake medicines seized in raid
PATNA: Patna police seized equipment and chemicals meant for manufacturing medicines, besides "fake medicines " after raiding a house in Rampur Nahar locality under the Sultanganj police station on Friday.
The recovered medicines included Vitazyme Plus, Jingovit Plus, Livozyme syrup, Sidglobin syrup and Heme Plus and Lysozyne, a source said. Several wrappers of these medicines were also seized.
The police raided the house after getting a tip-off from the state’s special branch about an illegal firm engaged in manufacturing fake medicines.
When contacted, additional director general of police Abhayanand said: "We received information that fake medicines were being manufactured in a house in Rampur locality of Patna and passed over the information to the Patna police. The raid conducted by the Patna police yielded good results."
Meanwhile, Town DSP RK Dubey, who led the police team, said that the medicines were being manufactured in a room in an unhygienic condition.
"The medicines were manufactured in the name of a Mumbai-based medicine company. But the Mumbai-based address of the company mentioned on the signboard also included "Rampur-800006". The house is located in Rampur locality of Patna," Dubey disclosed. Two persons, including a woman, were detained by the police. Both were working as labourers there. A large number of wrappers were also seized during the raid. The owner of the firm is traceless. "We have already informed the drugs control administration," he added.
FDA seeks to deter fake medicine use
WASHINGTON (AP) - Tagging bottles of pills with tiny transmitters may one day help keep counterfeits out of the drug supply, but until that or other protective technology arrives, patients must watch for fake medicines, a Food and Drug Administration official said Thursday.
”We need to raise the level of concern,” said FDA pharmacy chief Tom McGinnis, who heads a new agency task force hunting ways to stop the growing problem of counterfeit medicine.
Drug manufacturers are anxiously awaiting that task force’s conclusions.
Drug makers and sellers are urging FDA to consider a high-tech safeguard, tagging medicine with tiny radiofrequency chips that could let drugstores automatically tell the source of each bottle, McGinnis said.
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