The Ministry of Health (Minsa), through the Directorate of Pharmacies and Drugs in coordination with security bodies, constituted the Inter-institutional Executive Committee whose motto is “If it is False, it is not Medicine” and whose purpose is to work on a plan Operational Procedure for the prevention and prosecution of substandard pharmaceutical products that are allegedly counterfeit or illicit.
Elvia Lau, director of Pharmacy and Drugs of the Minsa, specified that the Committee has already signed two agreements and the inter-institutional operational protocol is being prepared to know how to act when detecting these illicit products.
“The Committee is made up of the Ministry of Health, the Public Ministry, the National Police, Senan, Senafront, the University of Panama and the National Customs Authority, since any person who is going to acquire a pharmaceutical product must do so in an authorized establishment, not do it online or on the street because it is harming your health,” Lau pointed out.
For his part, Ricaurte González, Specialized Prosecutor for Crimes Against Intellectual Property and Computer Security, stated that the intention is to identify and control all those substandard, counterfeit or illicit pharmaceutical products.
“It is an organizational meeting in which we will establish an inter-institutional operating procedure plan to find out what the role of each of the institutions is, so we must ensure that in the end there is a provided, robust process that then allows people that put the health of others at risk, ultimately have an effective sanction and the population must be made aware that these behaviors are severely punished,” he explained.
