Medicine can now be bought online, much like clothes, books and electronic gadgets, at affordable prices and without a prescription, in a worrying – and spiraling – health trend. Advertised via email, many of these medicines are of the prohibited variety. A recent study by a British medical researcher cautioned that many of the medicines available for purchase over the Internet were fraudulent and may contain shoe-shining solutions or clay. Published in the Clinical Therapeutic international medical publication, the report indicates that up to 62 percent of the medication sold over the Internet – which does not require a prescription – is fake. Similarly, in Germany, the Union of Pharmacists found that half the medicine sold over the Internet is fake, including a few posing as Tamiflu, the antiviral for the A (H1N1) virus. Dr. Dahaln Misri, a health professional working in the military hospital in Taif told Saudi Gazette that this was a truly global phenomenon. “All over the world, this is a challenge for governments to tackle. If this (problem) increases, it will create more problems and complications for patients, since most websites offering medication also offer different advice to patients,” he said. “The medicine is produced in mostly third world countries without approval from any recognized and certified international agencies, and now they are even available to purchase in industrialized nations.” Junk emails are a subset of spam that involve nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipient via email. Man of these emails involve the advertisement of sexual stimulants like Viagra, sleeping pills like Vicodin and Valium and the more common medication like Tylenol. Should you ever consider buying them? In recent years, there has been an explosion of websites offering medicines for sale via the internet. Many of these websites originate from outside the Kingdom and are therefore not regulated by proper authorities. Buying prescription-only medicines from unauthorized sources significantly increases the risk of getting sub-standard or fake medicines. Moreover, people who acquire medicines without the benefit of a consultation with an appropriate health care professional risk being supplied with medicines that are not safe or not suitable for them to use. A recent email sent to my address offered Viagra for a mere $1.15, which is much cheaper than local pharmacy prices and the company in question, Dyzy Co., offers to ship medication worldwide. Saudi Gazette spoke to Ibrahim (surname withheld on request), who admits to buying Viagra tablets made in India for 20 Saudi riyals per four tablets, which he concedes may well be fake. He explained that pharmacy Viagra tablets cost 120 riyals or more. His argument is that he doesn't need to buy the real thing for six times the amount, if the fake one is doing a well enough job. Dr. Ahmad Al-Barag, an associate professor at the Pharmacy department at Taif University spoke to Saudi Gazette and commented on the situation in the Kingdom. “In Saudi Arabia, it is forbidden to sell or buy these kind of medicine or drugs. Any medication should be licensed from the Ministry of Health and the Saudi Food and Drug Commission, which often release information about withdrawing certain medication or food, that is unfit for human consumption, from the market,” he explained. “The substances Internet medicine is made from may be authentic, but are very cheap and come from Asian countries like India. Thailand and Indonesia. They are produced without any clinical trials or reliable research in bulk within factories, not labs.” He added that in Dubai alone, there is up to 50 percent of counterfeit medicine sold over the Internet, which is produced and distributed so deceptively that its origins, authenticity or effectiveness are hardly questioned. However, medication whose only violation is that of patent laws cannot be termed as counterfeit drugs. A counterfeit drug may contain inappropriate quantities of active ingredients, may be improperly processed within the body (e.g., absorption by the body), or may contain ingredients that are not on the label (which may or may not be harmful), and is often sold with inaccurate, incorrect, or fake packaging and labeling.
