Author: Alana Rizzo, Daniela Lima

Source: Correio Braziliense - DF - BRAZIL - 02/09/2009

The Senate responded to allegations of counterfeit medicines and medical equipment in the country, shown in a series of Correio reports published in August. Created yesterday, the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI) of Medical Piracy will investigate the production and distribution of pirated medicines in the national territory. This clandestine trade moves millions in Brazil, leaves a trail of victims and has direct links to drug trafficking and cargo theft. Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) warn of the scale of the problem. About 25% of the medicines in circulation in the world are counterfeit.

Author of the request for the installation of the CPI, Senator Romeu Tuma (PTB-SP) states that there are strong indications that Brazilians are dying due to counterfeit medicines. The Federal Police, according to Tuma, arrest some counterfeiters, but it is necessary to identify how the distribution network for these drugs works. “We have to investigate hospitals, public and private, which may be opening up competition for these fake drugs at a lower price. I also have no doubt about the participation of doctors in the dissemination of this scheme ”, he says. The series of Counterfeit Healing reports was attached to the application and should serve as a basis for the preparation of the commission's work plan.

Statistics are missing

Brazil has no statistics to show the number of people who lost their lives or were deceived when they had hopes of recovery. It is estimated that, in Rio Grande do Sul alone, it exceeds 7 thousand. In three cases of drug adulteration identified by health authorities in other Brazilian states, four dozen were killed. And the volume of apprehensions of counterfeits in the first seven months of this year helps to reveal the scale of the problem: 313 thousand kilograms of medicines were collected from the north to the south of the country. It is a number seven times higher than that registered in the whole of last year, when 45 thousand kilos of pirated medicines were incinerated by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa).