Falsified medicines
The WHO defines falsified medicines as medical products that deliberately / fraudulently misrepresent their identity / composition or source.
Falsified medicines can be dangerous for a number of reasons. Perhaps they have been falsified or deliberately mislabelled. Illicit medicines often contain the wrong amount of active ingredient (too little, too much, or none at all). Some falsified medicines have been found to contain mercury, arsenic, rat poison or cement.
Stay safe when buing medicines online
Patients should only buy medicines from online retailers authorised by the national competent authorities in the EU Member States, to reduce the risk of buying sub-standard or falsified medicines. The European Commission has introduced a common logo that appears on the websites of these authorised retailers. The logo is clickable and user is forwarded to the website of national regulatory authority with published list of all online medicine retailers in Member State.
Clicking on the following logo will take you to the register of online retailers of the Slovak republic.
Double security for every prescription-based medicine
For this purpose, a Europe-wide verification system with standardised security features on packaging is used for prescription medicines. Each individual medicine package shall have two security features:
Falsified medicine with an identical serialisation number is detected in the legal supply chain from the first pack, because each Unique Identifier can be used only once. The smuggling of stolen goods in the legal supply chain should be prevented by being able to block serialisation numbers. Pharmacies, hospitals and wholesalers may not supply packs that generate alerts when scanned unless the alert has been fully investigated and a root cause has been found and falsification ruled out.
Action against falsified medicines
An effective response to the threat of falsified medicines demands collaboration by all stakeholders including patients, public health professionals, public and private organizations, pharmaceutical distributors, wholesalers, retailers, national regulatory and enforcement agencies. State Institute for Drug Control works closely with all related institution on national and either international level.
Manufacturing, distributing, selling or offering a falsified medicines may be considered a criminal offense.
Report suspected falsified medicines
If you have reason to believe that a falsified medicinal product is available for purchase then please email on counterfeits@sukl.sk. We will assess the evidence to determine whether a breach has occurred and then carry out a risk assessment to determine what level of investigation is required.
