White Paper: Til Death Do You Part?

By Donald J. Dobert, March 2009

You may be surprised to know that counterfeit medicines date back to the 4th century BC. For more than 2,000 years, the issue of fraudulent production of medicines has mostly been ignored. Today it is multi-billion-dollar worldwide trade. Fake drugs are estimated to lead directly to the deaths of more than 500,000 people a year across the globe.

What exactly is considered a counterfeit medicine?
A counterfeit medicine or fake drug is defined as: "A counterfeit medicine is one which is deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to identity and/or source. Counterfeiting can apply to both branded and generic products and counterfeit products may include products with correct ingredients, wrong ingredients, without active ingredients, with insufficient quantity of active ingredient or with fake packaging."