Word: franquet
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...problem is not limited to poor countries, however. When Pfizer recalled 120,000 packs of its cholesterol drug Lipitor in Britain in 2005 after it discovered a counterfeit version, it found that 60% of all the returned packs were fakes. Jacques Franquet, who heads security operations for the French drugmaker Sanofi Aventis, says his teams routinely find fake versions of about 15 of the company's drugs worldwide...
...experts say governments also need to step up enforcement of laws in order to effectively tackle the problem. The U.S. and Britain have special police units to deal with falsified medication, but most other countries lag behind, Franquet says. Kubic says that political efforts to fight the problem have flagged in recent years, mainly because countries like India and Brazil fear that the large amounts of generic drugs they produce legally may be mistakenly targeted in a global crackdown on fake-drug-trafficking. (Read "Are Direct-to-Consumer Drug Ads Doomed...
...Organizers make clear that the Cotonou declaration isn't aimed at generics. And they avoid using the word counterfeit since this term is often associated with intellectual-property issues and could lead some to believe that the initiative is aimed at protecting pharmaceutical companies' profits, not safeguarding public health. Franquet says it's important for public opinion to be mobilized against fake medicines, and he believes that given the sometimes tragic consequences, this should be easy to accomplish. "This is one of the rare areas where the public is on our side," he says...
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