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Medicine
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How To Buy Medications Safely |
As more Americans look for ways to save money on their medication costs, concerns over potentially counterfeit drugs-particularly from outside the U.S.-continue to grow. Patients need confidence that the medicines they buy are the ones their doctor prescribes, according to health care experts.
A growing body of evidence indicates that opening the U.S. borders to imported drugs is risky and unsafe. In recent years, numerous studies by America's most respected health care and security experts have shown that patients who buy their medicines from foreign suppliers face significant safety risks. Last year, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani called for a halt to all importation of medicines until the numerous safety and security issues can be resolved.
Giuliani is not alone in his concerns. Health and Human Services Secretaries from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, the U.S. Surgeon General and a host of FDA commissioners have all concluded that the potential savings of buying drugs from overseas and Canada is not worth the potential costs to the safety of America's drug supply.
Last December, an FDA investigation found that nearly half of the imported drugs they intercepted from four selected countries were shipped to fill orders that consumers believed were coming from "Canadian" pharmacies. A number of these medicines were found to be counterfeit. The Center for Medicines in the Public Interest predicts that counterfeit drug sales will reach $75 billion globally in 2010, an increase of more than 90 percent from 2005.
According to the World Health Organization, the consequences of accidentally taking counterfeit medicines can be serious, leading to therapeutic failure or drug resistance and, in some cases, even death.
There is a new information source to help consumers purchase medicines safely-www. BuySafeDrugs.info. The site provides information on the potential dangers of buying medicines outside the U.S. system and also details safe, legal alternatives to importation. In the past year, more than 6 million consumers visited the site to learn more about the risks they face from fake and counterfeit medicines. The Web site also directs visitors to options such as federal and state assistance programs and the Partnership for Prescription Assistance (www.PPARX.org or 1-888-4PPA-NOW), which matches low-income and uninsured patients with assistance programs that provide medicines for free or at reduced cost.
Investigators say importing medicines from other countries-including Canada-can be unsafe, even fatal. |
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