#StopFakeMeds #ThinkSmart
The amount of trafficking in fake medicines amounts to about 200 billion dollars per year. The financial windfall linked to this scourge attracts many producers located all over the world.
Who are the producers of fake medicines?
The first type of producer is small and medium-sized pharmaceutical companies that produce medicines outside of all standards, of all quality, and against good manufacturing practices.
Through their ethically questionable methods, they intentionally put our lives at risk.
A few examples of deadly manufactures, to illustrate the main processes used:
1/ manufacture of antibiotic-type drugs that are underdosed (containing too few active ingredients) or over-dosed (containing too many active ingredients).
2/ manufacture of medicines with contaminated excipients such as children’s syrups containing diethylene glycol, used instead of glycerin.
3/ manufacturing leading to a mixture of product batches, impurities, and bacterial proliferations type medicines to lower cholesterol and prevent cardiovascular disease.
4/ manufacture of unauthorized drugs, without clinical validation and sold as supposedly effective against epidemics, such as antivirals.
5/ manufacture of versions of drugs without control, bypassing strict quotas of active ingredients, such as opioids.
The common characteristic of these small and medium-sized enterprises is non-compliance with good manufacturing practices, lack of product quality control, circumvention of laws and regulatory controls, lack of traceability, use of non-compliant or low-quality ingredients, and production of products in unhygienic facilities.
The discharge of toxic waste by these entities endangers the populations living in the vicinity and causes serious and lasting damage to the environment.
The common interest of this first type of producers lies in saving on the costs of raw materials, manufacturing and storage, to the detriment of our health.
