The healthcare and pharmaceutical industry is becoming increasingly prone to substandard, spurious, falsely labelled, falsified and counterfeit (SSFFC) medical products. It is clear that the globalisation of the market has played its role in exacerbating this challenge, but the growing sophistication of counterfeiters, the expansion of e-commerce and a lack of an enforcement capacity have been fundamental drivers.
To give an idea of the scale of this problem, the World Health Organisation has estimated that up to 15% of all pharmaceutical drugs globally are counterfeited. While this translates to around 1% of drugs in developed countries within Europe and North America, the issue is more severe in developing countries in Africa and the Far East where the figure can rise to 30%. Furthermore the World Health Organisation reported that in 2011, 64% of all antimalarial drugs in Nigeria were counterfeit, a situation that could prove fatal for those suffering with the disease.
In response to this continued threat, government leaders, politicians and executives from major pharmaceutical providers are coming together to increase efforts to protect citizens from SSFFC medical products, currently through track and trace serialisation and tamper verification features. As a leading global provider of packaging and authentication solutions, Essentra advocates the implementation of both serialisation and tamper verification features, to increase patient safety.
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