TAK NAK ❌ To Counterfeit Medicine (Part 1)

Recently, there are more and more customers who came to us and showed us with boxes of medicines, either without Hologram or totally unregistered. This scenario has worried me so much:(. This has reminded me a lot on those days when I practised as a hospital houseman pharmacist as well as when I was a Pharmacy Enforcement Officer.

I can still remember a real case that I came across in the General Hospital🏥 that I practiced my houseman-ship years back. It was the very first misuse of unregistered/ counterfeit drug case that I ever came across at that point of my life as a pharmacist. I can still remember the painful and regretful face😥 of that poor guy in male medical ward under care of Nephrology team (kidney specialist).

It was part of our job as houseman pharmacist to clerk this patient’s case (a medical way of calling an interview) especially this kidney failure case was due to misuse of unregistered/ counterfeit medicine. After the interview, I was shock to found out that this patient has actually been taking the so called “medicine” for his knee pain from someone selling Chinese Imported medicine for more than 1 year.

Beside this, he is also taking some medications prescribed by his doctor for his hypertension as well as diabetes. Well, as usual, this old man was extremely incompliant of the medication provided by the hospital but extremely compliant to the medicine that he bought for his knee pain.

I was very curious on the medication that he was taking and requested him to show me the medications; it was just a normal medicine bottle with normal labelling of some herbs and simple instruction. Besides, to my curious, this medicine actually labelled with Hologram as well as Ministry of Health MAL registration number.

I wanted to know what was happening, and I checked the registration details of the products online base on the MAL registration number. I can’t remember what exactly the name of the products was, but Ministry data showed that the product registered with this number was not the same with the products that I was holding. My heart sunk suddenly, I knew that something very wrong had happened😱.

I immediately prepared a report and send the product to NPCB (National Pharmaceutical Control Bureau) for a test on the real content of the products; I knew this would not be good.

After a few weeks (of course, the patient has received his treatment while waiting for the result), I have received reply from NPCB, to my shocking😱, this product actually contained two types of control poison, dexamethasone and indomethacin. Dexamethasone is a potent corticosteroid while indomethacin is a pain killer that is frequently used to treat knee pain. Both medications bring more harm than good if use without proper guidance and monitoring.

The patient’s kidney function was permanently gone and has to rely on dialysis to sustain the remaining of his life. I was sad and furious😠. I was sad because this poor guy still has probably another 20 to 30 years of life to go through. I was furious because there are too many irresponsible people out there selling unregistered/ counterfeit products to innocent people everywhere. I told myself that it is my responsibility as a pharmacist to educate my patients, my family, my friends and people around me on the danger of counterfeit/ unregistered medicine.

TAK NAK❌ to Counterfeit/Unregistered Medicine. Share this story to your friends, family and your love one. Your simple click might save the life of a person. Stay tuned to my part 2 on anticounterfeit, more interesting stories from my experience as a pharmacy enforcement officer follows.