Healthy Homes Asia

Fake products in Asia

If you live in Asia, choosing quality is even more important owing to the fact that some countries are known for manufacturing many fake products, including nutritional supplements. These supplements can be extremely dangerous.

Cheap imitation medicines are doing more harm than good to patients in the Asia Pacific Region.

The US Food and Drug Administration has estimated that in parts of Asia fake drugs account for more than 50 per cent of medicinal sales and kill thousands of people every year.

The production of substandard and fake drugs is a vast and underreported problem in Asia, particularly affecting developing countries.

The estimate of 192,000 patients killed by fake drugs in China in 2001, gives an indication of the scale of human suffering.

Although exact data is impossible to collect, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates that counterfeits account for more than US$32 billion in annual drug sales world-wide.

In Haiti, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, and Argentina, more than 500 patients, predominantly children, are known to have died from the use of the toxin diethylene glycol in the manufacture of fake paracetamol syrup.

Furthermore The Lancet published a study reporting that large quantities of fake medicines claiming to contain Artesunate - a drug used to treat Malaria, found on sale in Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand - revealed that much of the samples collected contained little or no Artesunate at all.

Recently Chinese local industry and commerce administration departments uncovered a number of cases involving the production and selling of fake medicine.

According to a recent survey - studying 6,500 companies in twelve provinces across China - 33 business licenses were revoked and 67,000 boxes of fake medicine were seized.

Last week China's General Administration for Industry and Commerce (GAIC) exposed 16 fake medicine and medical treatment in health food advertisements after inspecting more than 80 newspapers with relatively large circulations in China. Some medicine adverts, masquerading as news stories, claimed to cure AIDS.

It is estimated that due to the misleading nature of these fake advertisements, about 2.5 million people in China take the wrong medicine annually, according to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

Even in Australia 18 companies are facing legal actions for advertising false health-benefit products on the web, following a world-wide internet sweep for false claims about health products this year by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

These health ads claimed to treat or assist in curing cancer, AIDs, diabetes, herpes, hepatitis, flu, asthma, migraine and chronic fatigue.

Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Yi has called on the Chinese government's food and medicine authorities to establish a series of mechanisms to ensure food and medicine safety.

In general, governments are often reluctant to publicize problems with the quality of the drug supply in their country, reflected in the lack of action taken in much of the world regarding the problem of counterfeits.

http://www.ap-foodtechnology.com/Formulation/Counterfeit-drugs-a-major-problem-for-Asia

http://sanyaexpat.com/index.php/news-sanya-hainan-china-world-sanyabay-dadonghai-yalongwan-shimeibay-haitangbay-haikou-shanghai/beware-dangerous-fake-health-products-at?blog=1

Especially if you live in Asia, you should be mindful that not all supplements are equal.

Some countries are well known for manufacturing vast amounts of fake drugs and nutritional supplements.

No matter where you live, if your health is important to you then you should be mindful of the quality of nutritional supplements you take.

When next considering which vitamin or mineral supplements to buy, seek out answers to the following questions:

• Where were they manufactured?
• Has the product been manufactured to any pharmaceutical grade or other recognised standards, or have they only been manufactured according to vague self-regulated guidelines?
• Have the supplements been independently tested and are they guaranteed as safe?
• Are the potency levels on the label guaranteed? Is the potency at low level RDAs or are they at levels shown to be suitable for maintaining optimal health and preventing degenerative diseases? Does the guarantee include a safety clause?
• Does the product identify levels of nutrients which may be harmful at high levels, such as Iron and Vitamin A?
• Does the manufacturer offer any special guarantees of safety over and above the norm?
• Is the product manufactured to a standard that satisfies high pharmaceutical standards for full disintegration?
• Does the product have a use by date?
• Has the product been manufactured in-house or has it been outsourced to other manufacturers and then marketed by another company?
• Is the daily suggested dosage a single pill? If this is the case it is highly unlikely that the dosage is at optimal amounts.
• Are the ingredients tested for bioavailability?

Once you find a product that comfortably fills all these criteria for quality you can be confident that you are purchasing a quality nutritional product.

Not all manufacturers provide such detailed information on their labels or even any supporting literature.

Only a handful of companies provide such quality assured supplements. Many others simply rely on full scale TV advertising and heavy marketing to persuade consumers to buy their products.

It is important to educate yourself on the differences. Your health is worth it.