KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry carries out routine checks on all premises selling medicine to combat the sale of counterfeit medicine in the country, Deputy Minister Datuk Seri Dr Hilmi Yahaya said yesterday.
He said that under the Sale of Drugs Act 1952, all medicine required registration with the Drug Control Authority before it was sold to consumers.
Registered medicine would be given a MAL registration number and must have the compulsory Meditag hologram safety label, he said.
He said the enforcement of product registration and use of the security sticker on pharmaceutical products had assisted in controlling unregistered and counterfeit products.
“Meditag decoder equipment are also distributed to pharmacies nationwide to ensure the authenticity of the holograms on the packaging and that the products are genuine,” he said when replying to a question from Senator Datuk Lim Nget Yoon in the Dewan Negara.
Lim also asked about the steps taken by the Health Ministry to eradicate the manufacture and sale of counterfeit medicine in Malaysia.
Dr Hilmi said the ministry also enforced tight monitoring by placing pharmacy enforcement officers at the country’s entrances such as ports, airports and border checkpoints to prevent any counterfeit and unregistered products from being brought into the country.
This enabled the Pharmacy Enforcement Division to confiscate 18,592 unregistered products worth RM12.4 million until June this year.
He said the ministry also made amendments to the law and created the new Pharmacy Act which imposed a huge fine and mandatory jail sentence for selling or manufacturing unregistered medicine and counterfeit medicine.
Besides giving awareness through consumer education and campaigns, Dr Hilmi said the ministry also provided an online service to allow the public to check the status of product registration at www.bpfk.gov.my.
The public can also check the products on which enforcement action had been taken by the ministry at www.pharmacy.gov.my. — Bernama