Fake & sub-standard drugs: India, China may be worst offenders

Monday, June 17, 2013

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has a humble disclosure to make: there is still no accurate estimate of the global scale of counterfeit medicines. Perhaps as compensation, the multilateral body has hung a new name on such products: substandard, spurious, falsely labelled, falsified and counterfeit (SSFFC) medicines.

Various reports by others suggest that the size of the global fake drugs industry could run into hundreds of billions of dollars. Deloitte’s vice-president Terry Hisey says it could be in the range of $50 billion to $200 billion annually. Health economist Roger Bate, who is also the author of the book Phake, which is an outcome of years of research into counterfeit drugs, says countries such as India and China are at the forefront of such a menace, selling fake drugs locally and globally.

Source: The Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

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