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Drug Busters: Tracking Down Counterfeiters

Novartis deploys a global team to track down counterfeit drugs and help authorities prosecute counterfeiters.

External education involves regulatory, health and law enforcement authorities around the world. "We've held training sessions for them; we've taken them into our manufacturing sites to show them the effort made to maintain good manufacturing practices," says Christian.

Chiu has provided training to local authorities throughout Asia, including China, India, the Philippines and Thailand. That entails helping them learn how to identify counterfeit product, but there's a side benefit to that: In training them, he and his staff get to know them. "That makes it much easier the next time when you actually have a real case," he notes.

The Novartis team also trains industry organizations, alerting them on what to look for in fake products, and encourages them to get the word out to their members. In Hong Kong, for example, Chiu says Novartis has organized seminars for customs officials and pharmacists via the Hong Kong Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry.

5. Getting the word out.

Novartis tries to raise awareness of the counterfeit problem and how countries can help to combat it, say, by passing stronger legislation or increasing penalties for offenders. Christian and Jackson also speak at industry conferences around the world. In June, Christian testified before a subcommittee of the U.S. Congress at a hearing on counterfeiting, in which he described the problem and also discussed the shortcomings of new anticounterfeiting technologies, such as RFID tags (see "Drugmakers Testing RFID Tags" ).

But there's a line on which many pharmaceutical companies must dance lightly. "We have to balance bringing the subject to people's awareness but without causing unnecessary panic and alarm," says Jackson. "Which is a very tricky balance."

It is indeed, on a number of fronts. Not the least of which is that the pharmaceutical industry is under constant attack by consumer advocates and politicians for the high cost of drugs, particularly in the United States. They wonder why the same medicines that cost so much in the United States are sold more cheaply in other parts of the world; the companies argue that they need to recoup development costs and that much of their research, which can take years, never results in an approved drug for market.

Calls to import cheaper drugs from Canada are but one of the manifestations of the pricing controversy. But to anticounterfeiters like Christian, that's a recipe for disaster. He worries that counterfeit drugs will seep into the legitimate supply chain if the United States allows importation. And if that happens on a large enough scale, Christian says, the public could panic and lose faith in the drug supply, resulting in patients who decide to stop taking their medicines.