More fake stuff and bullshit from the Chinese. When will it ever end....
This actually became an issue for me this past week. An antihypertensive that I routinely take for mild blood pressure problems apparently "stopped working". It caused me some difficulties, to say the least. Purchasing it from a small "corner store pharmacy", that apparently had Thai government approved pharmacists, was the problem. It's pretty clear that what I had purchased was a fake medication. I usually get this stuff from a large company pharmacy in one of the local malls; it takes them a week to ten days to get it from their distributor. I had purchased this from this different store on a whim; as they did not carry it, but "could get it" in a few hours, I became suspicious. But, the packaging, labeling, holograms, everything, seemed perfect. Just the timing seemed off.
The pills themselves looked identical, but they acted differently. In the humid climate of Phuket, they tended to get "mushy", when the previous versions that I had used, didn't. It all came to a head when I started noticing some blood pressure problems that were not usual for me.
Here's an article from the IHT. Read it carefully, and keep it in mind when you're traveling Asia. Purchase medications only from large, fairly well established companies. The "pharmacist down the block" may more than likely get his stuff from some distributor "down the block" who gets his shit from Burma or China. The distribution of these fake medications is presently on an industrial sized scale; these are not local house people making fake meds anymore.
I could not tell the difference from looking at the packaging. In fact, sometimes they purchase real packaging, break the pills up, cut them down to unacceptable levels, and then repackage them in the original, or closely similar, packaging. You may never know that what you're taking is fake, or, even worse, adulterated.
This actually became an issue for me this past week. An antihypertensive that I routinely take for mild blood pressure problems apparently "stopped working". It caused me some difficulties, to say the least. Purchasing it from a small "corner store pharmacy", that apparently had Thai government approved pharmacists, was the problem. It's pretty clear that what I had purchased was a fake medication. I usually get this stuff from a large company pharmacy in one of the local malls; it takes them a week to ten days to get it from their distributor. I had purchased this from this different store on a whim; as they did not carry it, but "could get it" in a few hours, I became suspicious. But, the packaging, labeling, holograms, everything, seemed perfect. Just the timing seemed off.
The pills themselves looked identical, but they acted differently. In the humid climate of Phuket, they tended to get "mushy", when the previous versions that I had used, didn't. It all came to a head when I started noticing some blood pressure problems that were not usual for me.
Here's an article from the IHT. Read it carefully, and keep it in mind when you're traveling Asia. Purchase medications only from large, fairly well established companies. The "pharmacist down the block" may more than likely get his stuff from some distributor "down the block" who gets his shit from Burma or China. The distribution of these fake medications is presently on an industrial sized scale; these are not local house people making fake meds anymore.
I could not tell the difference from looking at the packaging. In fact, sometimes they purchase real packaging, break the pills up, cut them down to unacceptable levels, and then repackage them in the original, or closely similar, packaging. You may never know that what you're taking is fake, or, even worse, adulterated.
A growing epidemic of fake medications in Asia
Fake-medication epidemic spreading in Asia
By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
Published: February 20, 2007
Asia is seeing an "epidemic of counterfeits" of life-saving drugs, experts say, and the problem is spreading. Malaria medicines have been particularly hard hit; in a recent sampling in Southeast Asia, 53 percent of the anti-malarials bought were fakes.
Bogus antibiotics, tuberculosis drugs, AIDS drugs and even meningitis vaccines have also been found.
Estimates of the deaths caused by fakes run from tens of thousands a year to 200,000 or more. The World Health Organization has estimated that a fifth of the one million annual deaths from malaria would be prevented if all medicines for it were genuine and taken properly.
"The impact on people's lives behind these figures is devastating," said Dr. Howard Zucker, the organization's chief of health technology and pharmaceuticals.
Internationally, a prime target of counterfeiters now is artemisinin, the newest miracle cure for malaria, said Dr. Paul Newton of Oxford University's Center for Tropical Medicine in Vientiane, Laos. His team, which found that more than half the malaria drugs it bought in Southeast Asia were counterfeit, discovered 12 fakes being sold as artesunate pills made by Guilin Pharma of China.
A charity working in Myanmar bought 100,000 tablets and discovered that all were worthless.
"They're not being produced in somebody's kitchen," Newton said. "They're produced on an industrial scale."
China is the source of most of the world's fake drugs, experts say.
This month, the Chinese government announced it was investigating whether the former chief of China's Food and Drug Administration had taken bribes to approve drugs. The director, Zheng Xiaoyu, was in office from the agency's creation in 1998 until he was dismissed in 2005 after repeated scandals in which medicines and infant formula his agency had approved killed dozens of Chinese, including children.
"The problem is simply so massive that no amount of enforcement is going to stop it," said David Fernyhough, a counterfeiting expert at the Hong Kong offices of Hill & Associates, a risk-management company hired by Western companies to foil counterfeiters.
The distribution networks, he said, "mirror the old heroin networks," flowing to Thai distributors with financing and money-laundering arranged in Hong Kong. The penalties are less severe than for heroin.
Daniel Chow, an Ohio State University law professor and an expert on Chinese counterfeiting, said he believed that the authorities would pursue counterfeiters "ruthlessly" for killing Chinese citizens but be more lax about drugs for export.
"The counterfeiters aren't stupid," he said. "They don't want anyone beating down the door in the middle of the night and dragging them away, so they make drugs for sale outside the country."
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said that he had "no idea" whether most of the world's counterfeits came from China, but that Zheng's arrest proved China was cracking down. He also said counterfeiters would get the same punishment no matter whom they hurt.
Many of the fake artesunate pills found by Newton's team were startlingly accurate in appearance — and much more devious in effect than investigators had suspected.
Not only did the pills look correct, as did the cardboard boxes, the blister packing and the foil backing, but investigators also found 12 versions of the tiny hologram added to prevent forgery.
In one case, even a secret "X-52" logo visible only under ultraviolet light was present, though in the wrong spot.
But the most frightening aspect appeared when the pills were tested. Some contained harmless chalk, starch or flour. But the latest, he said, contained drugs apparently chosen to fool patients into thinking the pills were working.
Some had acetaminophen, which can temporarily lower malarial fevers but does not kill parasites. Some had chloroquine, an old and now nearly useless anti-malarial. One had a sulfa drug that in allergic people could cause a fatal rash. And some had a little real artemisinin — not enough to cure, but enough to produce a false positive on the common Fast Red dye test for the genuine article.
International Herald Tribune
Fake-medication epidemic spreading in Asia
By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
Published: February 20, 2007
Asia is seeing an "epidemic of counterfeits" of life-saving drugs, experts say, and the problem is spreading. Malaria medicines have been particularly hard hit; in a recent sampling in Southeast Asia, 53 percent of the anti-malarials bought were fakes.
Bogus antibiotics, tuberculosis drugs, AIDS drugs and even meningitis vaccines have also been found.
Estimates of the deaths caused by fakes run from tens of thousands a year to 200,000 or more. The World Health Organization has estimated that a fifth of the one million annual deaths from malaria would be prevented if all medicines for it were genuine and taken properly.
"The impact on people's lives behind these figures is devastating," said Dr. Howard Zucker, the organization's chief of health technology and pharmaceuticals.
Internationally, a prime target of counterfeiters now is artemisinin, the newest miracle cure for malaria, said Dr. Paul Newton of Oxford University's Center for Tropical Medicine in Vientiane, Laos. His team, which found that more than half the malaria drugs it bought in Southeast Asia were counterfeit, discovered 12 fakes being sold as artesunate pills made by Guilin Pharma of China.
A charity working in Myanmar bought 100,000 tablets and discovered that all were worthless.
"They're not being produced in somebody's kitchen," Newton said. "They're produced on an industrial scale."
China is the source of most of the world's fake drugs, experts say.
This month, the Chinese government announced it was investigating whether the former chief of China's Food and Drug Administration had taken bribes to approve drugs. The director, Zheng Xiaoyu, was in office from the agency's creation in 1998 until he was dismissed in 2005 after repeated scandals in which medicines and infant formula his agency had approved killed dozens of Chinese, including children.
"The problem is simply so massive that no amount of enforcement is going to stop it," said David Fernyhough, a counterfeiting expert at the Hong Kong offices of Hill & Associates, a risk-management company hired by Western companies to foil counterfeiters.
The distribution networks, he said, "mirror the old heroin networks," flowing to Thai distributors with financing and money-laundering arranged in Hong Kong. The penalties are less severe than for heroin.
Daniel Chow, an Ohio State University law professor and an expert on Chinese counterfeiting, said he believed that the authorities would pursue counterfeiters "ruthlessly" for killing Chinese citizens but be more lax about drugs for export.
"The counterfeiters aren't stupid," he said. "They don't want anyone beating down the door in the middle of the night and dragging them away, so they make drugs for sale outside the country."
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said that he had "no idea" whether most of the world's counterfeits came from China, but that Zheng's arrest proved China was cracking down. He also said counterfeiters would get the same punishment no matter whom they hurt.
Many of the fake artesunate pills found by Newton's team were startlingly accurate in appearance — and much more devious in effect than investigators had suspected.
Not only did the pills look correct, as did the cardboard boxes, the blister packing and the foil backing, but investigators also found 12 versions of the tiny hologram added to prevent forgery.
In one case, even a secret "X-52" logo visible only under ultraviolet light was present, though in the wrong spot.
But the most frightening aspect appeared when the pills were tested. Some contained harmless chalk, starch or flour. But the latest, he said, contained drugs apparently chosen to fool patients into thinking the pills were working.
Some had acetaminophen, which can temporarily lower malarial fevers but does not kill parasites. Some had chloroquine, an old and now nearly useless anti-malarial. One had a sulfa drug that in allergic people could cause a fatal rash. And some had a little real artemisinin — not enough to cure, but enough to produce a false positive on the common Fast Red dye test for the genuine article.
International Herald Tribune
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