Fight the Fakes Campaign Gains Momentum as Eleven New Partners Join Global Movement

GENEVA, June 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Following the campaign's six-month anniversary, Fight the Fakes (http://www.fightthefakes.org) is proud to announce eleven new partners, bringing the total number of member organizations to twenty-five. New partners, representing wholesalers, pharmacists, mobile app services, coalitions for consumer protection and generic pharmaceutical manufactures, join the campaign to speak up and spread the word about the devastating impact of fake medicines. These organizations add to a diverse group of standing partners, including healthcare professionals, disease-specific organizations, research-institutes, product-development partnerships, foundations, non-profits and the private sector.

Fake medicines put patients and the general public at risk. They can be long-standing or new medicines, over-the-counter or prescription, branded or generic. People exposed to fake medicines believe they are receiving a genuine treatment, but instead they are getting potentially dangerous products that could increase resistance to real treatments and cause further illness, disability or even death. Though it is a challenge to measure the scope of these dangerous products, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that fake medicines can account for up to 30% of the drug supply chain in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The eleven new partners are the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP), the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacy in the EU (ASOP EU), the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (CSIP), the European Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers (GIRP), the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA), the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers (IFPW), the International Pharmaceutical Students Federation (IPSF), Mobilium, the Partnership for Safe Medicines (PSM), PSM India and the Pharmaceutical Security Institute (PSI).

Fight the Fakes partners believe that a comprehensive strategy to combat fake medicines requires an active participation that involves all stakeholders, leveraging competencies at local, national and global levels.

Fake medicines are a crime against patients that must be tackled each day, across all continents and at all levels of the supply chain. Fight the Fakes is fast becoming a major platform, representing the large variety of perspectives from the global health community joining forces to speak up and spread the word about the threat of fake medicines to global health.

Please visit http://www.fightthefakes.org and the Twitter page (@FightTheFakes) to learn more and to lend your voice to this growing global movement!

SOURCE Fight the Fakes