Author: Stephanie Nebehay

Source: UOL - São Paulo / SP - HEALTH - 19/05/2010

GENEVA (Reuters) - The production and sale of counterfeit drugs is on the rise in rich and poor countries, and more and more unsuspecting consumers buy them over the Internet, experts said on Wednesday.

Fake or substandard drugs often travel in hiding, on twisting paths, to mask their country of origin as part of a criminal activity worth billions of dollars, they added.

"They put a lot of people at risk of harm from medical products that may contain too little, too little or wrong, and / or contain toxic ingredients," said Margaret Hamburg, director of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

"Counterfeiting is growing in complexity, scale and geographic scope," she said in a speech to the World Health Organization (WHO) annual ministerial meeting.

In rich countries, counterfeiting involves "expensive hormones, steroids, anticancer drugs and lifestyle-related pharmaceuticals," the WHO said.

In developing countries, especially in Africa, counterfeit drugs are often available for the treatment of serious diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS, the UN agency said.

The delegate from Nigeria recalled that, in February 2009, 84 children in his country died from adulterated syrup.

Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, said that illicit products have also increased the problem of drug resistance, including important drugs for the treatment of malaria and AIDS.

"For the patient, any medicine with compromised safety, efficacy or quality is dangerous," she said.

Leading generics manufacturers India and Brazil claim, with support from activists, that major pharmaceutical companies are taking advantage of concerns about fake drugs to try to protect their patents against legitimate competitors in the generics sector.

"What we are opposed to is that a group of private companies, with the help of the (WHO) secretariat, wages a war in this organization against generic drugs," said the Brazilian ambassador to WHO, Maria Nazareth Farani Azevedo, in her speech.

Chan said that WHO will not enter the debate on patent intellectual property. "WHO's role should be to focus on public health, not on law enforcement or intellectual property enforcement."

Pharmaceutical laboratories involved in product research and development say that counterfeit drugs pose a threat to patients, and that it is not commercial interests that drive them in this campaign.

There were 1.693 known incidents of counterfeit drugs last year, an increase of 7 percent, according to this group of laboratories, which includes Bristol-Myers Squibb, Roche, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis.