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CEBU CITY, Philippines - Cebu province has been identified as one of the hotspots for the sale and distribution of counterfeit drugs in the country, according to a private investigating firm.
“Depending on the volume of the products, the drugs are brought into the country through the major airports and seaports,” said John Sacriz, managing director of IP (Intellectual Property) Manila Associates.
IP Manila is a private firm hired by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca for its anti-counterfeit medicines program.
The other hotspots were identified as Dagupan City in Pangasinan, Pampanga, Manila, Laguna, Batangas, Davao, General Santos and Zamboanga.
However, the incidence of counterfeit medicines in Cebu is low.
“In Cebu, based on market surveys, the incidence of counterfeit medicines is not high or only about 3 percent. Of all the areas where we conducted enforcement projects, we found Cebu has pro-active local government officials and government agencies,” he added.
Some medicines found to have fake counterparts in the Philippines are Lasix, a drug to treat cardiovascular disease; Plendil, which taken by heart patients to dilate blood vessels; Merrem, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, and Sensorcaine, a local anesthetic.
Sources of counterfeit drugs in the Philippines have been identified as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Colombia, Indonesia, China, India, Nepal and Myanmar.
Products that find their way to the Philippines are finished products or already packed in boxes.
What's the health danger of counterfeit medicine? It alters the effect of the drug on the user.
“Sixty percent of fake medicines have no active ingredient, 16 percent contain an incorrect ingredient, 17 percent have an incorrect amount of active ingredient and only about 7 percent actually contains the correct amount of active ingredient,” he said.
The problem occurs in places where cash is scarce and people can not afford to buy the medicines, he added.
The Department of Health reported that this year the prevalence rate of counterfeit drugs in the country has gone down from 30 percent to 10 percent or one in every 10 medicines, said Sacriz, who was one of the speakers of the Forum on Safe Medicine: Regional and Philippine Issues on Quality of drugs in the Market held at the University of San Carlos main campus on Tuesday.
In a separate interview, BFAD Central Visayas supervisor Monina Coyoca said that the agency has not found any fake drugs in the region this year.
“We monitor drug stores to check on the presence of fake drugs. But so far, this year there have been no reports of fake drugs. Maybe because the store owners are more aware that they no longer buy medicines from peddlers. They should buy only from legitimate stores,” she said.
Coyoca said that the agency has not yet issued a new list of drugs that the consumers should look out for but the warning remains.
“They can submit the medicines to the BFAD for confirmatory tests. We cannot confirm that a drug is fake merely from ocular inspection,” she said.
“Usually the fake drugs are the fast-selling drugs like paracetamol and other over-the-counter drugs. But this does not usually include prescription drugs,” she added.
Sacriz said that they used to work with Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD).
“BFAD cannot seize counterfeit products,” explained Sacriz in the forum.
“They leave the items to the seller and if a case is raised then they ask the seller to bring the products to their office. But who would submit their counterfeit drugs for inspection?” he said.
“What we use is the certification that is issued by the BFAD, to make our case stronger,” he added.
Sacriz said that they were able to conduct 78 enforcement actions since 2001 and was able to seize more than 465,000 pieces of counterfeit medicines have been seized in raids. But since they were after medicines manufactured by AstraZeneca, 35 percent of these were not recovered as these were manufactured by other pharmaceutical companies.
The effect of the proliferation of counterfeit medicines in the local and global market is big enough to make a dent on the economy, said Danny Hodder Regional Director for Asia Pacific-Global Security of pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
“Legitimate sales and tax revenues are lost. The makers of counterfeit drugs do not pay taxes, they have no sales cost and they do not comply with regulation,” he said.
“They are involved in a very high profit, low risk business,” he added.
“Public money is also used to buy medicines of unknown safety and reliability,” he added.
