Ukrainian officials shut down nearly 150 pharmacies in the first half of 2010 because they were suspected to be selling counterfeit drugs.
SafeMedicines.Org is blogging on a report from NRCU regarding an inspection of Ukrainian pharmacies conducted by Ukraine’s State Drugs Inspectorate. Following the inspections, 149 pharmacies within Ukraine were found not to meet requirements primarily due to substandard and counterfeit medicines and were shut down.
According to the NRCU report:
• About 20 percent of newly opened pharmacies had their licenses immediately revoked as soon as they were inspected.
• "Exactly those pharmacies are the potential and real sources of the spread of substandard and counterfeit medicines among the consumers", Inspectorate Chairman Oleksiy Soloviev said.
• The licensing procedures for new pharmacies were simplified in February of this year, causing a three-fold increase in the amount of pharmacies over the last eight months, according to the news source.
As adulterated, fraudulent and counterfeit medications continue to pour into the legitimate supply chain it becomes even more important for all members of the global pharmaceutical supply chain to deploy solutions and technologies to protect their inventories and the consumer from these deadly bogus drugs.
To read the SafeMedicines blog, visit: http://www.safemedicines.org/2010/09/ukraine-shut-down-149-illegal-pharmacies-in-first-half-of-2010.html.
To learn more about pharmaceutical anti-counterfeiting technologies, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.
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