What happens to patients when they use fake or poor quality drugs?

Sophisticated manufacturing

Recently, Thanh Hoa City Police initiated a case and prosecuted 7 defendants for "producing and trading in counterfeit disease prevention and treatment drugs". This group produced fake pharmaceuticals, mainly common antibiotics.

According to Thanh Hoa City Police, under the guise of being pharmacists specializing in buying and selling drugs for pharmaceutical companies, this group of people, through social networks Zalo and Facebook, purchased imported drugs floating on the market.

Then use chemicals to erase the printed text on the blister pack, use a machine to reprint the information (name, ingredients, active ingredients) on the blister pack, creating a new medicine.

In addition, the group also purchased domestically produced pharmaceuticals of known origin at low prices, then soaked them in water to peel off the original manufacturer's labels on the tubes. Then they printed and pasted fake labels as imported drugs, and put them on the market for high prices.

Through social networks, these people advertise that they have a source of genuine antibiotics from the company that are "smuggled" into pharmacies across the country.

Using the above tricks, they sold a large quantity of fake pharmaceuticals to consumers. During the investigation, the police of the unit urgently searched five locations where the goods were produced, hidden, and where the defendants worked in Hanoi, Can Tho, and Ben Tre.

During the search, the police seized fake pharmaceutical products, mainly antibiotics, including: 3,258 boxes of Cefixim 200mg, 657 boxes of Cefuroxim 500mg...

Also in Thanh Hoa, the City Police previously initiated a case related to the production and trade of fake functional foods. After discovering and expanding the investigation, the City Police searched 10 locations where the suspect lived, worked, produced, and hid goods in Hanoi.

Here, the police seized many fake functional food products including more than 4,000 boxes of finished Vu Hoang Thanh Tam An Cung Hoan.

Working with the police, the defendants initially confessed that from the beginning of 2023 until their arrest, this group had produced and sold more than 20,000 boxes of fake Vu Hoang Thanh Tam An Cung Hoan pills to the market, with a value equivalent to about 50 billion VND.

In addition, there have been many cases of criminal groups impersonating doctors to fraudulently sell functional foods. Many patients have become victims of these tricks.

Unforeseeable danger

There are many cases where patients become seriously ill after taking fake drugs or poor quality functional foods. The most recent case is a woman (67 years old, Phu Tho province) who had to be hospitalized after using functional foods of unknown origin.

The woman said that after several days of attending a local conference, a company offered her 20 bottles of dietary supplements at a discount. After using the first bottle, she suffered from digestive problems.

After using the 5th bottle, in addition to digestive disorders, the patient also felt chest tightness, insomnia, numbness in the mouth and lips, numbness in the hands and feet, and dizziness. At the hospital, the woman was instructed to stop using the functional food and treat the symptoms.

According to Mr. Nguyen Trung Nguyen - Director of the Poison Control Center, Bach Mai Hospital, recently the center has received cases of poisoning from functional foods containing banned substances.

There were cases of patients in coma, convulsions, brain damage, requiring emergency treatment. Test results showed that these products contained banned substances that affect health such as Sibutramine, Phenolphtalein...

There are even substances that are only allowed in medicine, but are added to functional foods. Patients who take these substances have a great impact on their health because it is completely impossible to control the quality and dosage.

Speaking with Tuoi Tre, Dr. Nguyen Huy Hoang, Vietnam - Russia Hyperbaric Oxygen Center (Ministry of National Defense), also said that poor quality and fake drugs pose many potential health risks.

For allopathic medicines in general, if the ingredients are not guaranteed, they can be toxic to the liver, kidneys or cause allergies, and can even cause anaphylactic shock.

In addition, if patients and doctors are unlucky enough to use counterfeit drugs, they will be subjective, making the disease worse, making treatment more difficult. At the same time, it will affect the reputation of doctors, medical facilities and reputable manufacturers. Therefore, strict measures are needed to manage counterfeit drugs.

According to Dr. Hoang, buying fake pharmaceuticals and poor quality functional foods often happens at small pharmacies. In particular, buying drugs on social networks is still popular, making it difficult to control quality.

Therefore, people should be wary of products of unknown origin. It is best to choose reputable, qualified pharmacies to buy medicine.