On Friday, October 16, the Association of Pharmaceutical Researchand Development (APRAD) in partnership with the American Chamber of Commerce(the Chamber) organized and held a Round Table discussion “On illegal import ofmedicines of unknown origin and questionable quality to the territory ofUkraine”. There were involvedrepresentatives from the Ministry of Health, the State Administration ofUkraine on Medicinal Products, the State Fiscal Service and the State BorderGuard Service, lawyers and other stakeholders as well as international experts,namely, Mr. Donald E. Townsend, Jr., Regional Intellectual Property RightsAttaché and Mr. Pablo Rodenas, Advisor of EU Twinning Project.

Amain purpose of the event was to express a deep concern about the increasingcases of receiving information as well as facts of illegal import of medicines,including unregistered in Ukraine, which has recently taken a large-scalecharacter. Such medicines are being sold through so-called 'internetpharmacies', activities of which are not controlled and not regulated by thestate. These sales outlets offer expensive, hardly affordable prescribedmedicines thus, except, phone operator and web-page address it doesnot have any identification. In this regards, it became possible to distributedcounterfeit medicines and import to Ukraine medicines from other marketsbypassing customs clearance procedure, without proper quality control andwithout complying with the relevant conditions of transportation and storage.

Thatis why the discussion was initiated with an involvement of a wide range ofinterested representatives from central executive bodies and security agenciesto analyze the situation and determine the stages of a comprehensivecounterwork with the problem due to high health risk for patients, andsignificant negative financial consequences for the state.

Asan outcome of the meeting, the following preliminary action plan washighlighted by the participants:

1)   Necessity of official communication from the side of respective stateagencies to avoid purchases of medicines of unknown origin and questionablequality as they may cause harm to health. 

2)   Need toconduct training sessions for customs officers, for those specialists who carryout customs clearance on specifics of dealing with medicines (can be supportedby the US Embassy and the EU Project). 

3)   Involvement of representatives from the Ministry of Internal Affairs andState Security Service to combat the problem. 

4)   Analyze the experience of World Health Organization and 39 largestpharmaceutical companies’ cooperation with Interpol in terms of preventing andcombating international trade of counterfeit and faked goods (analysis ofpossible implications for Ukraine). 

5)   Ensure the inclusion of trademarks to the Customs Register of IP Objects. 

6)  Organization of the Seminar with participation of member-companies that producepharmaceuticals and law enforcement agencies to determine concrete action planfor further cooperation.  

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