The alarm on drug counterfeiting comes from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (Efpia), the European Association of Pharmaceutical Industries, which, commenting on the publication of the Europe Economics report "Safe MedicinesThrough Parallel Trade", underlines that for too many years the phenomenon has been little considered, while serious measures are needed to curb it. "We are dealing - says Jean-Francois Dehecq, vice president of Efpia and president of Sanofi-Aventis - with full-blown criminal organizations that operate on an international scale and play with human life in the name of profit. We must therefore work together on several fronts, improving the efficiency of law enforcement investigations, establishing adequate civil and criminal penalties for these traders-bandits and monitoring the distribution channels that facilitate the entry of counterfeit medicines on the market". In particular, the so-called re-packaging, i.e. the illegal change of packs, should be kept an eye on. Against this phenomenon, a new labeling system is about to be launched in 2009 that ensures the highest level of product traceability, verifying the integrity of all packages through two-dimensional matrix codes.
Source: "Pharmacist33"
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