India's market in generic drugs also leads to counterfeiting
By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 11, 2010; 12:25 AM
IN NEW DELHI Private investigator Suresh Sati rattled off the popular brand
names listed on the boxes of cough syrup, supplements, vitamins and
painkillers sprawled across the desk and shelves in his basement office.
"They look real, but all these are fakes," said Sati, head of a New
Delhi-based agency that helps police conduct raids against counterfeit-drug
syndicates across the country. "A regular customer cannot make out if a drug
is fake. . . . The biggest giveaway is when someone is selling medicines
very cheap. It is almost always fake."
India, the world's largest manufacturer of generic drugs, has become a busy
center for counterfeit and substandard medicines. Stuffed in slick packaging
and often labeled with the names of such legitimate companies as
GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Novartis, the fake drugs are passed off to
Indian consumers and sold in developing nations around the world.
Experts say the global fake-drug industry, worth about $90 billion, causes
the deaths of almost 1 million people a year and is contributing to a rise
in drug resistance.
Estimates vary on the number of these drugs made in India. The Indian
government says that 0.4 percent of the country's drugs are counterfeit and
that substandard drugs account for about 8 percent. But independent
estimates range from 12 to 25 percent.
Indian officials say the clandestine industry has hurt the image of India's
booming pharmaceutical industry and its exports, worth $8.5 billion a year,
mostly to African and Latin American countries.
To clamp down on the illegal trade, the health ministry launched a reward
program this year offering $55,000 to those who provide information about
fake-drug syndicates.
Last year, the ministry also strengthened its drug law to speed up court
trials. Suspects found guilty of manufacturing and selling fake drugs can be
sentenced to life in prison.
The number of people arrested for manufacturing and selling fake drugs rose
from 12 in 2006 to 147 last year, and drugs worth about $6.5 million were
seized over this period.
"It is very difficult to dismantle the entire operation," Sati said. "When
we bust one operation, two more spring up elsewhere. Convictions are rare."
The tricks of the trade include sticking fraudulent labels on expired
products, filling vials with water, stuffing small amounts of real
ingredients in packages of popular licensed brands and putting chalk power
in medicine packets.
But more than the concern for public safety, officials here have been
particularly alarmed about recent incidents that discredit India's image
abroad.
In June, officials at Nigeria's Abuja airport caught a shipment of fake
antibiotics, containing no active ingredients, with a "Made in India" label.
Nigerian investigators later said that a Chinese company shipped the drugs
via Frankfurt. In a similar incident last year, a shipment of fake
anti-malaria drugs from China arrived in Nigeria with an Indian tag.
Last year, Sri Lanka banned imports from four Indian companies after
officials discovered substandard medicine in shipments.
Over the years, drug companies have used holograms or embossed their logo on
the packaging to protect their brands, but these have also been
counterfeited in India.
One company, MSN Labs, is using a technology developed by U.S.-based
start-up firm PharmaSecure that allows consumers to check the authenticity
of medicines by sending in a text message of the code written on them.
But many Indian companies are "apprehensive of pursuing the cases for fear
of bad publicity and possible loss of confidence among consumers," said
Barun Mitra, director of the New Delhi-based think tank Liberty Institute.
Co-writing a report on a recent survey, Mitra said that 12 percent of
sampled drugs from the capital's pharmacies were substandard. "We are
behaving like ostriches with our heads in the sand and pretending that
nothing is amiss even as the problem keeps growing and affecting Indian
patients."
On a recent morning in the northern city of Varanasi, a young man named
Ashish waited for a shipment of painkillers and postpartum pills to arrive
by train.
He said his order of pills that controlled postpartum bleeding contained
chalk powder but came with the brand name Methergine in a Novartis package.
The painkiller had insufficient ingredients and carried a Bidanzen Forte
label inside a knockoff GlaxoSmithKline package.
"There is a lot of profit in this," said Ashish, 28, describing the extent
of counterfeit drugs in Varanasi. He declined to give his surname because
his operation is illegal.
"I do not think about right or wrong," he said. "I am not killing anybody. The worst is that these medicines will not show any result and the patient may have to check into a hospital."
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar