Counterfeits risk far higher from internet than stores

摘要

COUNTERFEIT medicines have only found their way into UK pharmacies 10 times since 2004, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency's latest anticounterfeiting strategy says. The "Falsified medical products strategy 2012-15" says patients should contact their community pharmacist in the first instance if they are concerned about the authenticity of a medicine or device. It points out that patients are more at risk of obtaining counterfeit drugs via the internet than they are from a high-street pharmacy. "Illegal websites offering falsified medical products are difficult to monitor, quick to disappear, hosted all over the world and the beneficiaries are hard to identify," it says.