Internet drug peddlers raided in 9 countries
By Ben Hirschler
LONDON (Reuters) - Authorities in nine countries have raided businesses suspected of supplying medicines illegally over the Internet in an unprecedented global swoop coordinated by Interpol, officials said on Thursday.
The operation, codenamed Pangea, involved dozens of locations in Britain, Germany, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, Canada and the United States.
The raids on Wednesday mark the first time that such action has been taken on an international scale, an Interpol spokeswoman said.
Illicit sales of medicines via the Web are a growing problem, since many of the products are counterfeits of dubious quality and potentially dangerous.
Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which raided 12 residential and commercial premises in the crackdown, said illegal Internet sales posed a serious risk to public health.
“A medicine bought in this way has no guarantee that it is safe or that it is effective and can in fact be harmful,” Danny Lee-Frost, head of operations, said in a statement.
“Our messages are simple — do not buy prescription-only medicines over the Internet without a prescription and if you are illegally selling or supplying medicines, we will use all appropriate measures available to stop you.”
In many countries, the abuse and trafficking of prescription drugs now equals or exceeds the use of illicitly manufactured heroin, cocaine, amphetamine and opioids, according to the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board.
In Britain, operation Pangea resulted in the seizure of computers, documents and more than a thousand packs of unlicensed medicines.
Products seized including drugs claiming to treat conditions such as diabetes, impotency, obesity, hair loss and male breast growth as a side effect from bodybuilding steroid abuse.
The Internet provides an easy channel because there are no national control mechanisms.
Properly regulated, Internet pharmacies can provide a valuable service by increasing competition and offering access to treatments in underserved areas.
But the online world is also a Wild West of spam e-mails and hard-to-trace suppliers, according to healthcare regulators.
(Editing by Giles Elgood)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Related Posts:
By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - The Netherlands topped on Thursday a European survey ranking healthcare systems according to consumer value, despite having one of the continent’s lowest levels of spending on medicines. Latvia came bottom of the 2008 Euro Health Consumer Index compiled by private Swedish company Health Consumer Powerhouse (HCP), which assesses a range of
Full Post: Dutch top for healthcare despite low drug spending
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Huw Jones STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Pharmaceuticals in the European Union will be traceable from factory to pharmacy in a bid to crack down on the rise in counterfeit drugs, which are potentially lethal, the bloc’s executive said on Wednesday. EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said the 27-nation bloc used to be a transit area for
Full Post: EU to trace pharmaceuticals in crackdown on fakes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - Prescription painkillers account for most fatal overdoses from legal drugs in West Virginia and contribute to an exploding problem of overdoses across the United States that is most pronounced in rural areas, U.S. government researchers said on Tuesday. They said two-thirds of people who died from overdoses of legal pills in
Full Post: Abuse of pain pills fueling deaths in West Virginia
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday it had received a $9.7 million grant from the U.S.-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for research into the production and dosage of medicines for children. The research, aimed at increasing the low number of “child size” medicines available around the world and especially in
Full Post: WHO gets Gates grant for child medicines research
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans spent $2.2 trillion on healthcare in 2007, or $7,421 per person, according to a U.S. government report released on Tuesday. The 6.1 percent rate of growth over 2006 was the lowest since 1998, mostly because growth in spending on drugs slowed, the team at the Centers
Full Post: U.S. health spending hits $2.2 trillion in 2007