Preventing counterfeit drugs in Ho Chi Minh City

Bustling trading activities at the drug market in Hoa Hung ward.

Tightly manage the largest drug market in the city

To Hien Thanh Drug Market, officially known as the Pharmaceutical and Medical Equipment Trade Center, is currently the largest pharmaceutical trading point in Ho Chi Minh City with 159 licensed businesses.

After nearly 20 years of operation, this place has distributed drugs nationwide, including chemical drugs, medicinal herbs, traditional medicines and medical biological products. To ensure compliance with legal regulations, in addition to the management role of the Department of Health, the People's Committee of Hoa Hung Ward also regularly organizes inspections of business licenses, material conditions, drug storage, as well as related records and documents.

However, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health still recorded the phenomenon of fake drugs and drugs of unknown origin infiltrating the market. Some pharmacies, for profit, have chosen to buy goods from unofficial sources, lacking invoices and documents, creating loopholes for counterfeiters, counterfeit stamps, and QR codes to deceive consumers and pharmacies.

According to statistics, Ho Chi Minh City is currently the pharmaceutical distribution hub for the whole country with a system of up to 42 manufacturing plants, 1,531 wholesale establishments, more than 8,450 retail establishments and nearly 650 traditional medicine suppliers. For the public hospital system, drugs are purchased through bidding and strict import control, ensuring that drugs have clear origins. On the contrary, more than 15,000 pharmaceutical businesses outside hospitals are a difficult problem for inspection and supervision.

According to Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hien, Deputy Head of the Inspection and Legal Department, Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health, many establishments at Hoa Hung drug market were still found to not have full invoices and documents. There were many cases of taking advantage of the form of remote delivery, renting warehouses outside the registered business location, causing difficulties for inspection work.

Increased monitoring

From 2024 to now, Ho Chi Minh City Police have discovered 9 violations in the health sector. Notably, a large ring of "manufacturing and trading fake medicines" was seized by authorities with more than 1,100 boxes of finished medicines and tons of raw materials of unknown origin, mainly medicines for treating bone and joint diseases and skin diseases.

The Department of Health also inspected nearly 1,000 pharmaceutical businesses, handling 36 establishments for violations with a fine of more than 3.5 billion VND. After testing 774 drug samples, the Ho Chi Minh City Testing Center discovered 20 samples that did not meet quality standards, accounting for 2.58%. However, Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health Nguyen Hoai Nam said: "The number of tested samples is still too low compared to the amount of drugs in circulation. Improving the efficiency of testing is very urgent."

To enhance drug quality management, Ho Chi Minh City has proposed that the Ministry of Health soon complete the planning of the national testing system and digitize the testing standards database. Vice Chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Tran Thi Dieu Thuy emphasized: "In the context of strong development of e-commerce, the control of counterfeit goods and counterfeit drugs requires a unified database system, interconnected between sectors."

The city proposed to coordinate with domain name service providers, banks, telecommunications, delivery... to trace and thoroughly handle subjects trading in fake drugs online. In addition to technological solutions, Ho Chi Minh City also emphasized the important role of standardizing drug distribution channels, avoiding the situation of drugs being mixed from unclear sources. The official distribution system needs to enhance traceability using QR technology, dataizing the entire drug supply chain from production, import to consumers. According to medical experts, acts of deliberately trading in fake drugs and poor quality drugs not only violate the law but also cause serious consequences to public health, and need to be strictly handled.

NHAT THANH

Source: https://nhandan.vn/ngan-chan-thuoc-gia-o-thanh-pho-ho-chi-minh-post901380.html