Al Jufali said,’ SFDA saves no effort in countering drug fraud through establishing the necessary laws and regulations to prevent the entry of fake drugs and put the necessary plans and mechanisms in place to strengthen control on the supply chain and to prevent trading or marketing of fake or violating drugs. This means establishing plans to encounter fake drugs and adoption of the latest technologies to detect them and receiving fake drugs reports and dealing with them’.

 

He added, ‘SFDA did not neglect the important role of the points of entry which are considered the bottle neck for entry of products. SFDA dedicated 12 out of 33 points of entry for entry of drugs and equipped them with qualified pharmacists. He pointed out that samples of drugs are taken for analysis to ensure their safety. All drugs shipments to the Kingdom are checked to ensure their conformity with the requirements and conditions. SFDA does not  allow clearance of drugs except for  official agents or licensed stores in order to tighten control and to ease tracking of the products.

 

Dr. Al Jufali pointed out that the international reports revealed that the percentage of fake drugs marked through the internet reaches up to 50% the reason that SFDA prevented, in coordination with the appropriate authorities, the sale of any type of drugs through the internet and regulated drug imports to be through couriers.

 

Dr. Al Jufali stated that SFDA control mandate include among others, routine and surprise field surveillance and inspection of drug stores, Kingdom wide to make sure that they are free of bad or fake drugs or drugs of unknown source. Samples are taken from all registered drugs, after marketing, to ensure that they comply with the specifications.

 

He pointed out that SFDA adopts the latest technologies for detection of fake drugs, e.g., Raman Spectroscopy, which enables inspectors recognize fake drugs in less than 10 seconds.

 

SFDA VP for Drug Sector stated that SFDA conducted survey studies on samples of registered drugs and identified the categories of these products based on several factors, including among others, the international reports of fake drugs received by SFDA, high profit margin products and impotency products. Within the last three years, over 12 K samples were collected from 4 K pharmacies. The study concluded that the percentage of fake drugs in the Kingdom is less than 1%, all of them are in the impotency drugs category.

 

He also mentioned that SFDA participates in several conferences, committees and workshops to benefit from  countering of fake drug experiences in the developed countries and to overcome the obstacles between the concerned government authorities to prevent the entry of fake drugs. In the field of awareness, SFDA aims to raise community awareness of fake drugs and communicating related alerts on its website, press and social media. SFDA also encourages consumers to report their comments to SFDA,with regard to the products under SFDA control.