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Reining in the rogues

With the exception of an infectiously joyous masterpiece known as “Where the Hell is Matt,” I’m no fan of YouTube.

Why do so many people think anyone cares about the stuff that shows up in all those grainy, user-generated video clips?

But recent research into the subject of packaging’s role in brand protection and anti-counterfeiting led me to a YouTube offering I’d highly recommend (www.youtube.com/watch?v=83xPn9b32ts). Called “The genuine danger of counterfeit medicines,” it was commissioned by EFPIA, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations. It’s a serious examination of an increasingly serious problem.

Some of it covers familiar territory. Like the part about 500,000 fake medicines being seized by EU Customs in 2005 and how, just two years later, that number had exploded to 4 million. Or the part about the World Health Organization and its estimate that more than half the drugs sold over the Internet are fakes. Or the segment where an Eli Lilly & Co. representative shows how difficult it is to tell an authentic carton of the antidepressant Zyprexa from a counterfeit carton. “The quality of packaging on the counterfeit is really remarkable,” he says.

The part of the video that is not familiar territory is the part that covers the EFPIA Product Verification Project. This ambitious project seeks to establish a standardized identification solution for pharmaceutical products across Europe. It’s driven largely by the growing number of dosing and dispensing errors at pharmacies and hospitals and by the alarming growth of counterfeits in the legitimate supply chain.

Annual Outlook Report: Workforce
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