Unlicensed pharmaceuticals worth two million pounds were seized from the UK’s postal service and ports towards the last week of September 2011, with police confiscating another 200,000 pounds worth. The week long operation also saw  investigators from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA)  cracking down on 13,000 rogue websites selling fake drugs. The MHRA alleges that most of these unlicensed pharmaceuticals were made in China or India, and that the rouge websites were operated by Chinese or Russian criminal networks.

Apart from Fake Viagra, the operation unearthed medicines for epilepsy, breast cancer, stomach ulcers and asthma, according to Nimo Ahmed, head of MHRA’s intelligence unit. Mr. Ahmed said that the regulatory authority’s chief concern was to safeguard public health. Buyers of medicines from illegal websites may not get the drug they need, or may not get it in the right dose, or there may be  hazardous substances in the counterfeited product.

 

Source: NEW YORK TIMES