WHO launches drive against fake drugs

GENEVA, Nov 16 (Reuters) The World Health Organisation urged governments to crack down on the 30 billion dollar market in fake drugs which make up 30 percent of the market in some poorer countries.

''Counterfeit medicines ... can harm patients by failing to treat serious conditions, can provoke drug resistance, and in some cases kill,'' WHO said in a statement yesterday.

WHO launched a programme, backed by health bodies and police, that aims to promote greater legal oversight of the sale of drug products and convince governments to treat the fake drug trade as a serious crime and punish it severely.

''The latest estimates ... show that more than 30 percent of medicines in some areas of Latin America, southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are counterfeit,'' it said.

In August, WHO said it believed the illegal trade worldwide was worth more than 30 billion dollars a year or between five and eight perent of the annual market for medicines.

In richer emerging economies, counterfeit drugs made up ten per cent of the market and in many of the independent republics of the former Soviet Union the figure went as high as 20 per cent.

Fakes also account for 50 percent of those medecines sold on the Internet by illegal operators, as opposed to legal pharmaceutical companies that offer drugs at reduced prices but demand medical prescriptions before fulfilling Internet orders.

PROBLEM GROWING Health and police authorities across the globe say criminal gangs have moved into the business as a lucrative money-spinner. WHO and Interpol have already mounted an ''Operation Jupiter'' in southeast Asia against the trade.

Dr Harvey Bale, director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Associations (IFPMA) told the first meeting in Bonn of the IMPACT taskforce that ''the problem is growing everywhere''.

IMPACT links WHO with some 20 international partners including Interpol, the European Commission and the World Customs Organisation.

WHO said IMPACT would present guiding principles for legislation ''to help countries adapt their laws to the gravity of the crime'', treated in most countries, it said, as no worse than counterfeiting luxury items like handbags or watches.

''In some industrialised countries, counterfeiting t-shirts receives a harsher punishment than counterfeiting medicines,'' the UN agency said.

Reuters DKA GC1234