What are counterfeit medicines?
Counterfeit medicines are any brand (or generic) medicines and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) that are deliberately and fraudulently mislabelled by unauthorised parties with respect to source, and / or composition and / or therapeutic quality. They include products without active ingredients, or with the wrong active ingredients, or with insufficient active ingredients, or with fake packaging. Sometimes they contain substitutes, or are diluted with foreign or toxic bodies, to increase the quantity of the original medicine. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 8% to 10% of medicines in the global medicine supply chain are counterfeit, reaching as high as 25% in some countries. The largest counterfeit market with close proximity to the EU is Russia, where it is estimated that 12% of medicines are counterfeit. Counterfeit medicines are entering Europe’s legitimate supply chain in increasing numbers. More than 4.081 million counterfeit medicines packs were seized at
