Governments must help stop fake drugs

Governments must cooperate to stop the global spread of counterfeit drugs, most of which come from India and China, two of the world's biggest pharmaceutical firms said on Wednesday.

Security experts for Novartis and Eli Lilly said a huge rise in online sales of fake drugs has changed the playing field for global pharmaceutical companies and is affecting sales of products ranging from antibiotics to Viagra and vitamin E.

"Most of the problem is in Asia, mainly India and China. But we are seeing more satellite countries," including Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand, Ray Velez, regional corporate asset protection & compliance officer for Eli Lilly Asia, told Reuters at a pharmaceutical conference in Singapore.

"This is a very, very big business," Velez said. "The competition today for us is not Viagra. It is counterfeit drugs."

The World Health Organisation has estimated that the trade in counterfeit drugs, which also hurts global names such as GlaxoSmith Kline Plc, Pfizer and Bayer, was worth some $35 billion a year.

Tony Chiu, executive director for security in Novartis Asia, told the conference that Internet sales and cross-border trade of fake drugs were on the rise.

"Governments are beginning to take counterfeit drugs trade more seriously," Chiu said, adding China's new regulations to curb Internet sales of counterfeit drugs were a good move.

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"We want to engage the U.S. and E.U. governments to work with China and India to stop the spread of counterfeit goods," Velez said.

The WHO considers a drug to be a fake if it has no active ingredients, the wrong substance, or the correct substance in the wrong quantity. Mislabelling and tampering with the expiry data of a medicine also makes it counterfeit.

Both Velez and Chiu said most counterfeit drugs made in India come from Mumbai, and Velez also said some of the largest batches of fake drugs from China are produced in Tianjin and Ningbo.