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US Regulator Warns Consumers of Online Pharmacies Located in Manitoba
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has advised consumers not to purchase prescription drugs from two online pharmacies located in Manitoba based on reports of counterfeit versions of the prescription drug products being sold to U.S. consumers.
The FDA has claimed that products (treating conditions from breast cancer to male pattern baldness) purchased from ten different Canadian websites may be counterfeit.
FDA operations have shown that 85 percent of the drugs being promoted as “Canadian,” based on accompanying documentation, actually came from 27 other countries around the globe.
Paul Duchesne, a spokesman for Canada’s federal health department said, “We are investigating, and if there are any safety concerns, we will be sure to alert the public.”
The FDA is soon expected to seek implementation of RFID to track pharmaceuticals to combat counterfeiting. RFID tags in each box would uniquely identify that precise package and would permit a user to perform a reverse audit, or "pedigree" of a product. This allows the origin and destination of pharmaceuticals to be known at all times. Use of RFID in healthcare is rapidly growing and is forecast to become a $2.1 billion global business by 2016.
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