Crackdown on fake, smuggled medicine makes progress – but lacks legal framework
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Tons of smuggled and counterfeit medications have recently been seized in the Kurdistan Region with hundreds of pharmacies, clinics and medicine storages closed down following the regional government’s decision to crack down on illegal drugs and medical practices.
But hundreds of drug-importing companies still don’t have medically-recommended warehouses, with low-quality medicines still posing a threat to public safety.
Government reactions
Rudaw produced a series of programs late last year shedding light on smuggled, fake, and bad-quality medicines that drew a swift reaction from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), leading to measures to regulate the medicine market. New regulations require physicians to write their prescriptions on a computer, using medical, not commercial, names for drugs.
Good progress has since been made in terms of quality control of medications imported to the Kurdistan Region, but there is a lot more to be done to adequately reform the health sector and minimize medical malpractices.
“We have referred more than 33 cases to the court, closed down 265 places ranging from pharmacies, clinics, medicine storages, and companies, and seized more than 80 to 90 tons of smuggled, counterfeit and low-quality medicines,” Dr Goran Rozhbayany, head of the KRG’s Medicines Quality Control Department, told Rudaw’s Legel Ranj Program last week.
“We have arrested some people backed by very high-ranking officials. Among those arrested were Kurds, Arabs, and Turks.”
Rozhbayany warned there are some high-ranking officials behind the people smuggling medicines or trading in counterfeit or low-quality drugs in the Kurdistan Region.
“Those who do this work [smuggling medicines and selling fake drugs] are people of low esteem. They are mafia and worse than ISIS militants,” he said, referring to the Islamic State group.
“They are backed by high-ranking authorities.”
Judge Dilshad Fayez, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Region’s Public Prospector’s Office, took part in the program too. He said they had “referred four cases of fake and smuggled medicines to the court for investigation” over the past three months, including pharmacists and drug importing companies.
Fayez warned most companies licensed by the government to trade medicines do not have proper warehouses to store their medicines in temperatures recommended by pharmaceutical companies.
“There are 208 companies in the Kurdistan Region that have been licensed to import medicines. Very few of them had storages for the medicines they were bringing in before. But they were later warned and given a deadline to build storages. The deadline was July 1,” he said.
“Now, out of these 208 companies, only nearly 35 of them have storages in line with the standards set by the Ministry of Health. That is why we wrote a letter to the Ministry of Health asking that the activities of these companies be halted immediately.”
Legal drawbacks
People caught committing these medical malpractices are dealt with by the courts according to the laws of the Kurdistan Region’s Syndicate of Medical Employees, allowing release on bail and subsequent fine of a small amount of cash for the illicit activities that endanger public safety.
Rozhbayany warned that the current legal system poses a problem for them to completely crack down on smuggled or counterfeit drugs and deter those involved in this kind of activity.
“These people are arrested today and will be released on bail tomorrow,” he said.
Jabar Mohammed, head of the Syndicate of Medical Employees in the Kurdistan Region, called on the government to toughen these laws in order to deter these black marketeers.
“The Kurdistan Regional Government and parliament should pass a general law applied on the health sector and people instead of having syndicates passing their own laws and then sending them to the parliament telling them these are our laws,” he said.
“When these people are referred to the court, they will be dealt with in accordance with the laws of the syndicate of pharmacists. The fine is 500,000 or 1,000,000 dinars. But if there is a general law for importing counterfeit medicines or selling smuggled medication, they will be dealt with in accordance with the government laws.”
Mohammed also called on the KRG to toughen inspections of medical practices and make them regular.
“During Saddam’s reign, there was a standard against which all public and private laboratories were tested. They were closed down if they yielded wrong results. This procedure has unfortunately not been implemented in Kurdistan.”
Locals recently complained they obtained different results at different laboratories for the same tests.
Dr Hezhan Anwar, head of Market Monitoring Department at KRG’s Medicines Quality Control, described these places as “side-labs that only have one device. They take blood samples from patients and send them to another laboratory by a taxi where the test is done and later returned in this heat.”
Explaining why the same tests read differently at different labs, acting head of the Health Affairs Committee at the Kurdish parliament Dr Shayan Askari said the reason is partly because the medical equipment imported to the Kurdistan Region is often kept and transported in lower temperatures than it should be – hence the discrepancy.
Public dissatisfaction
People have welcomed the government’s new initiative to regulate the medicine market, purging it of smuggled or low-quality medication, but are still dissatisfied with the health system and the widespread existence of these drugs in the Kurdistan Region.
One pharmacist in Erbil who spoke to Rudaw said “low quality as well as smuggled medicines have decreased” in the market as a result of the government’s decision to crack down on these kinds of medication.
Another pharmacist said: “The major problem facing the medicine market is the medication smuggled into the country, but these medicines have decreased by 60 percent now. The second problem is pricing. Prices of medicines are not the same everywhere in the market.”
A man who had bought medicine for his wife complained about the quality of the medicines available in the market.
“I feel like these medicines are ineffective. They [doctors] even recommend that we obtain some of the medication abroad. But we don’t have a choice; we have to buy them here anyway,” he said.
One patient said he will have confidence in the region’s health system when he sees public officials and authorities taking their own families to the hospitals and clinics used by the public.
“There are nearly 5,000 authorities who don’t go to local hospitals here for treatment, nor do they go to local schools. We don’t even see them shopping in the market. I will have trust in medicines when these politicians take their loved ones to the hospitals I take my kids to.”
But hundreds of drug-importing companies still don’t have medically-recommended warehouses, with low-quality medicines still posing a threat to public safety.
Government reactions
Rudaw produced a series of programs late last year shedding light on smuggled, fake, and bad-quality medicines that drew a swift reaction from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), leading to measures to regulate the medicine market. New regulations require physicians to write their prescriptions on a computer, using medical, not commercial, names for drugs.
A pharmacist in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq dispenses medicine. Photo: Rudaw TV
Good progress has since been made in terms of quality control of medications imported to the Kurdistan Region, but there is a lot more to be done to adequately reform the health sector and minimize medical malpractices.
“We have referred more than 33 cases to the court, closed down 265 places ranging from pharmacies, clinics, medicine storages, and companies, and seized more than 80 to 90 tons of smuggled, counterfeit and low-quality medicines,” Dr Goran Rozhbayany, head of the KRG’s Medicines Quality Control Department, told Rudaw’s Legel Ranj Program last week.
“We have arrested some people backed by very high-ranking officials. Among those arrested were Kurds, Arabs, and Turks.”
Rozhbayany warned there are some high-ranking officials behind the people smuggling medicines or trading in counterfeit or low-quality drugs in the Kurdistan Region.
“Those who do this work [smuggling medicines and selling fake drugs] are people of low esteem. They are mafia and worse than ISIS militants,” he said, referring to the Islamic State group.
“They are backed by high-ranking authorities.”
Judge Dilshad Fayez, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Region’s Public Prospector’s Office, took part in the program too. He said they had “referred four cases of fake and smuggled medicines to the court for investigation” over the past three months, including pharmacists and drug importing companies.
Fayez warned most companies licensed by the government to trade medicines do not have proper warehouses to store their medicines in temperatures recommended by pharmaceutical companies.
“There are 208 companies in the Kurdistan Region that have been licensed to import medicines. Very few of them had storages for the medicines they were bringing in before. But they were later warned and given a deadline to build storages. The deadline was July 1,” he said.
“Now, out of these 208 companies, only nearly 35 of them have storages in line with the standards set by the Ministry of Health. That is why we wrote a letter to the Ministry of Health asking that the activities of these companies be halted immediately.”
Legal drawbacks
People caught committing these medical malpractices are dealt with by the courts according to the laws of the Kurdistan Region’s Syndicate of Medical Employees, allowing release on bail and subsequent fine of a small amount of cash for the illicit activities that endanger public safety.
Customers collect prescription medication from a pharmacy in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Photo: Rudaw TV
Rozhbayany warned that the current legal system poses a problem for them to completely crack down on smuggled or counterfeit drugs and deter those involved in this kind of activity.
“These people are arrested today and will be released on bail tomorrow,” he said.
Jabar Mohammed, head of the Syndicate of Medical Employees in the Kurdistan Region, called on the government to toughen these laws in order to deter these black marketeers.
“The Kurdistan Regional Government and parliament should pass a general law applied on the health sector and people instead of having syndicates passing their own laws and then sending them to the parliament telling them these are our laws,” he said.
“When these people are referred to the court, they will be dealt with in accordance with the laws of the syndicate of pharmacists. The fine is 500,000 or 1,000,000 dinars. But if there is a general law for importing counterfeit medicines or selling smuggled medication, they will be dealt with in accordance with the government laws.”
Mohammed also called on the KRG to toughen inspections of medical practices and make them regular.
“During Saddam’s reign, there was a standard against which all public and private laboratories were tested. They were closed down if they yielded wrong results. This procedure has unfortunately not been implemented in Kurdistan.”
Locals recently complained they obtained different results at different laboratories for the same tests.
Dr Hezhan Anwar, head of Market Monitoring Department at KRG’s Medicines Quality Control, described these places as “side-labs that only have one device. They take blood samples from patients and send them to another laboratory by a taxi where the test is done and later returned in this heat.”
Explaining why the same tests read differently at different labs, acting head of the Health Affairs Committee at the Kurdish parliament Dr Shayan Askari said the reason is partly because the medical equipment imported to the Kurdistan Region is often kept and transported in lower temperatures than it should be – hence the discrepancy.
Public dissatisfaction
People have welcomed the government’s new initiative to regulate the medicine market, purging it of smuggled or low-quality medication, but are still dissatisfied with the health system and the widespread existence of these drugs in the Kurdistan Region.
One pharmacist in Erbil who spoke to Rudaw said “low quality as well as smuggled medicines have decreased” in the market as a result of the government’s decision to crack down on these kinds of medication.
Patients often complain about the low quality of medicines dispensed at pharmacies in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Photo: Rudaw TV
Another pharmacist said: “The major problem facing the medicine market is the medication smuggled into the country, but these medicines have decreased by 60 percent now. The second problem is pricing. Prices of medicines are not the same everywhere in the market.”
A man who had bought medicine for his wife complained about the quality of the medicines available in the market.
“I feel like these medicines are ineffective. They [doctors] even recommend that we obtain some of the medication abroad. But we don’t have a choice; we have to buy them here anyway,” he said.
One patient said he will have confidence in the region’s health system when he sees public officials and authorities taking their own families to the hospitals and clinics used by the public.
“There are nearly 5,000 authorities who don’t go to local hospitals here for treatment, nor do they go to local schools. We don’t even see them shopping in the market. I will have trust in medicines when these politicians take their loved ones to the hospitals I take my kids to.”