Medicines on the web – risks and benefits

The global nature of the Internet makes it an excellent way to promote health. But it can also give misleading information or be used to market harmful health care products. To a lot of consumers, the Internet means low prices, discounts, privacy, and access for people living in remote places or who want first access to new products.

There are countless illegal offers of medicines on the Internet, many of them counterfeit. According to the World Health Organization, in over 50 % of cases medicines purchased over the Internet from sites that conceal their physical address are counterfeit.

MEDICRIME Convention

In 2010 the Council of Europe adopted the Convention on counterfeiting of medical products and similar crimes involving threats to public health (MEDICRIME Convention), the first international criminal law treaty to address this public health problem.

The convention provides a framework for proportionate and dissuasive sanctions, victim protection and national and international co-operation, and considers the use of the Internet to distribute counterfeit medical products to be an aggravating circumstance of the crime. It will be open for signature by any country in the world.

The MEDICRIME Convention criminalises:

the manufacturing of counterfeit medical products;
supplying, offering to supply and trafficking in counterfeit medical products;
the falsification of documents;
the unauthorised manufacturing or supplying of medicinal products and the marketing of medical devices that do not comply with conformity requirements.

Objectives of the Council of Europe

Guaranteeing everyone’s fundamental right to access to information on health issues and raising awareness about the risks of counterfeit medicines for public health.
Combating counterfeit and illegal medicines and health care products, including those offered online.
Setting standards and taking practical measures to promote public health and high quality medicines and for countries to co-operate on ways to criminalise illegal practices.

The European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and HealthCare (EDQM) contributes to the basic human right of access to good quality medicines and health care. It promotes and protects human health by:

Elaborating quality standards for the manufacture and quality control of medicines in Europe (a European Pharmacopoeia comprising over 2000 standards) and beyond; and ensuring they are applied to substances used for the production of medicines.
Co-ordinating a network of some 100 official medicines control laboratories in 35 countries.
Working with national and international organisations to combat illegal and counterfeit medicinal and medical products.
Providing policies and model approaches for the safe use of medicines in Europe, including guidelines on pharmaceutical care.
Establishing ethical and quality standards for the collection, storage and use of blood components for blood transfusion and organ transplantation.
Collaborating with national and international organisations to fight counterfeit and illegal medicines.
Contributing to protect the health of consumers through specific programmes for standards for cosmetics and food packaging.

Signatory Parties to the Convention for the elaboration of a European Pharmacopoeia (37): Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, “The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the European Union.

Observers (23): European countries: Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russian Federation and Ukraine. Non-European countries: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Madagascar, Malaysia, Morocco, Senegal, Syria, Tunisia and USA. World Health Organization.

Achievements

Committee of Ministers Resolution on good practices for distributing medicines via mail order (2007);
Council of Europe Survey on counterfeit medicines (2006);
Model of a network of single points of contact (2007);
Committee of Ministers Recommendation on the impact of information technologies on health care – the patient and Internet (2004);
Committee of Ministers resolution on the pharmacist’s role in the framework of health security (2001);
Practical guide for users to distinguish doubtful from reliable medical information, which also informs about the risks of buying medicines on the Internet;
EDQM training for officials in the health and law enforcement sector on how to combat counterfeit medicines and protect public health.

Medicines on the web – risks and benefits - Council of Europe