The Danger of Counterfeit Drugs (Second of Two Parts)

This is the VOA Special English Development Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.comWe talked last week about counterfeit medicines and how the problemis especially bad in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The World Health Organization says up to thirty percent of the medicine sold in many developing countries is not real.It also estimates that up to fifty percent of the medicine sold on the Internet is counterfeit. That can put people at risk even in wealthy countries that represent only a small part of the counterfeit drug market.Today we look at what is being doneto fight counterfeit drugs.Several companies are developing ways to make counterfeits easier to identify. And there are existing methods, like a machine that can quickly identify chemicals in pills to confirm if the pills are real.Other ideas include things like special tracking codes for drug packages. People could send a text message with the code and get a message back confirming that what they bought is listed in a database.Some drug makers and other companies put three-dimensional images called holograms on their products as a security device.Other anti-counterfeit effortsinclude the use of radio frequency identification tags. Many companies use these electronic tags to follow products through the supply chain from the manufacturer. The American Food and Drug Administration says RFID tags act like an electronic safety net to make it easier to catch counterfeits. Last July, the Food and Drug Administration advised manufacturers to add what are called physical chemical identifiers to their medicines. These are special chemicals,colorings or tastes that counterfeiters could not easily copy.Bryan Liang is with the Partnership for Safe Medicines, an organization in the United States. He says the Internet is not only a place where people can get tricked into buying counterfeit drugs.It is also a place where counterfeiters can find all the materials they needto make them.He says the most important members of the "counterfeit detection team" are the patients themselves. He says raids on counterfeiters are often the result of information from people whobought fake medicines.Bryan Liang says people whoknow their drugs and the effectsof their drugs are the bestsecurity against fakes.And that's the VOA Special English Development Report. You can find last week's report on counterfeit drugs at voaspecialenglish.com.(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 01Mar2010)