With knowledge of counterfeit medication becoming more and more exposed, pharmaceutical companies around the world are stepping up and helping authorities combat the problem. We recently talked about how Pfizer has been working hard to prevent fake medicine.
Today we’ll be talking about how Bayer, the makers of drugs like Aspirin and Xarelto, has renewed its commitment to fighting fake medications and has employed a number of strategies in ensuring that counterfeiters have a harder time peddling inferior drugs on the market.
Bayer’s campaign is a multifaceted approach to the problem of fake medicines. It relies on five actions the company is taking to ensure counterfeit drugs are resisted on multiple fronts.
Investigational Measures
Bayer is working with local authorities and law enforcement operations to help with investigations. In some cases, they hire private investigators and gather evidence. This provides additional resources and a second perspective on a variety of cases, as well as ensuring that the criminals making fake drugs are found and tried in court.
Legal Measures
Bayer has a zero-tolerance policy for counterfeiters. When perpetrators are caught, the company uses its resources to bring cases and lawsuits to court. Their team of lawyers ensures that justice is served, and this also helps relieve possibly stressed and underfunded legal systems, keeping these crimes from going unpunished.
Security Features
Aside from funding law enforcement agencies and legal cases, Bayer also ensures that its products feature unique security features. Different countries require different features on medication, but common ones involve barcode tracking, tamper-proof packaging, tamper-evident seals, and a variety of other measures meant to make sure medicine the being sold is genuine. Bayer also has its own trademark designs, so that medications can be identified as genuine by their customers.
Cooperation with Authorities
Combining all previously mentioned methods, Bayer works with law enforcement agencies, justice systems, and governments all over the world to contribute to the fight against counterfeit medication. The company acknowledges that it would not be able to solve this problem on its own and helps in the fight wherever it can.
Educational Work
Finally, Bayer works with customers to ensure they are aware of what a genuine product is and looks like. Using TV commercials, informational events, awareness campaigns, brochures, flyers, and more, Bayer ensures that everyone buying medicine, from the customers themselves to the pharmacies and distributors, knows how to identify the real deal. This is essential in fighting the problem of fake drugs, and the more people who help with it, the better.
As a large multinational corporation, Bayer has significant resources to combatting pharmaceutical crimes like counterfeit drugs. Working with authorities has been beneficial for everyone, as the increased amount of information, data, and resources all serve to clear up the market and prevent fake drugs from entering the supply chain.
Most drug companies are working to solve the counterfeit medication problem. As more and better drugs are developed, and even as other medicines are proven to still be effective, there will always be unscrupulous people trying to profit off of fake versions. If too many people are taking counterfeit drugs, not only do corporations suffer from a lack of sales, but eventually too many people will become sick from inferior or wrong medications. As large companies continue to profit off of selling their products, they also have a duty to ensure that their customers (or potential customers) are kept healthy. Bayer is a company that happily performs this obligation, and wants to ensure that people are not being sold harmful knockoffs.
Here at IDLogiq, we’re working on solutions using blockchain technology, and hope to provide even more solutions for this growing problem.
