According to the World Health Organization, counterfeit medicines represent an enormous public health challenge. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can come across medicines seemingly packaged in the right way, in the form of tablets or capsules that look right, but which do not contain the correct ingredients and, in the worst case scenario, may be filled with highly toxic substances. In some countries, this is a rare occurrence, in others, it is an everyday reality.

By The Numbers

• The U.S.-based Center for Medicines in the Public Interest predicts that counterfeit drug sales will reach $75 billion globally in 2010, an increase of more than 90 percent from 2005. Counterfeiting is greatest in those regions where the regulatory and legal oversight is weakest.
• Many countries in Africa and parts of Asia and Latin America have areas where more than 30 percent of the medicines on sale can be counterfeit, while other developing markets have less than 10 percent.
• Medicines purchased over the Internet from sites that conceal their physical address are counterfeit in over 50 percent of cases.
• In 2004, a 22-year old woman in Argentina suffering from anemia died of liver failure after receiving highly toxic counterfeit treatments.
• According to the WHO, “In May of 2005 another woman died and a 22 year old pregnant woman was injected with the same counterfeit. She survived but gave birth to a 26 week premature baby. To date, Argentinean law does not consider counterfeiting medicines a crime.”
• In 2006, Russia’s Federal Service for Health Sphere Supervision reported that 10 percent of all drugs on the Russian market were counterfeit. However, other sources estimate that the real figure could be much higher.
• In Peru the sale of counterfeit drugs has risen from an estimated US$ 40 million in 2002 to a current US$ 66 million, according to Peru’s Association of Pharmaceutical Laboratories.
• The Dominican Republic’s Public Health Department reported that 50 percent of the country’s pharmacies operated illegally and 10 percent of the medicines that arrived in the country were fake. For example, some of the medicines found had expired over 10 years before.
• In Kenya, a random survey by the National Quality Control Laboratories and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board found that almost 30 percent of the drugs in Kenya
  were counterfeit. Some of the drugs were no more than just chalk or water marketed as legitimate pharmaceutical products.

Read more facts about countefeit medicines from WHO here.

IMPACT Task Force

In order to mobilize awareness and action in the fight against fake drugs, in February 2006, WHO created the first global partnership known as the International Medicinal Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (IMPACT). IMPACT is comprised of all 193 WHO Member States on a voluntary basis and includes international organizations, enforcement agencies, national drug regulatory authorities, customs and police organizations, non-governmental organizations, associations representing pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesalers, health professionals and patients’ groups. These groups have joined to improve coordination and harmonization across and between countries so that eventually the production, trading and selling of fake medicines will cease.Learn more about IMPACT here.