At the end of a long day, you realise you’re starting to get a headache. So you buy painkillers from the street vendor, and take two. But how do you know what those pills really are? The vendor isn’t a pharmacy. There’s no package insert listing ingredients or dosage instructions. What if you’ve just tried to treat your headache with counterfeit medicine?
The term “counterfeit medicine” refers to medicines that are deliberately and fraudulently falsified or mislabelled. Also called sub-standard or falsified medicines, they would have failed to pass the quality measurements and standards which are approved by medicine regulatory authorities. They aren’t to be confused with generic medicines – those are cheaper, but still scientifically proven to be safe and efficacious versions of patented medicines.
