Fighting Fake Drugs for ED is the name of IBSA's campaign against counterfeit medicines for the treatment of erectile dysfunction and the marketing of such drugs on the black market. The campaign aims to raise public awareness of this illegal and extremely dangerous practice.
The counterfeit market has become a global problem worth between $75 and $200 billion, varying in size or class of drugs worldwide. Back in 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that 'a counterfeit medicine is one which is deliberately and fraudulently mislabelled with respect to identity and/or source'.
As a guarantee of the authenticity and safety of medicines and their traceability, the EU Falsified Medicines Directive on serialisation came into force in 2019, whereby each product package is assigned a unique serial number in the form of a barcode, which cannot be altered or falsified and which includes production details and a batch number. IBSA had adopted this practice even before it became mandatory.
One of the main counterfeit medicine markets in Europe is that of phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors (PDE 5 inhibitors) for the treatment of erectile dysfunction. The most common formulations of this medicine, tablets, are also the ‘easiest’ to reproduce.
IBSA's development work in orodispersible film (ODF) therefore represents a new frontier of innovation in the field of oral administration and one which it is difficult to counterfeit.
'Don't worry... be IBSA.' is the strong message through which the campaign highlights the standards of innovation and quality of all IBSA's production processes and technologies.