Some one in 10 online pharmacies have had their websites and social media “cloned by criminals” to “trick patients into buying counterfeit weight loss medication”, an NPA survey has today revealed.
The body accused social media giants of being “asleep at the wheel” for not doing enough to “prevent the sale of counterfeit medication online”.
And it said that it had “sent evidence” to health secretary Wes Streeting, calling on the government to introduce “stronger safeguards for patients to identify a safe and regulated online pharmacy”.
Read more: MHRA and eBay remove over 200 fake ED meds from sale
According to the NPA, 100 distance selling pharmacies (DSPs) – representing around one quarter of all DSPs in the UK – completed the survey between March 26 and April 6.
It found that two in five online pharmacies had seen patients “unwittingly buy weight loss medication from unregulated providers in the last year”, with reports of criminals “posing as legitimate pharmacies” in an attempt to trick patients into buying counterfeit weight loss treatments.
“Insufficient response”
Some pharmacies told the NPA that their social media videos offering health advice had been “stolen by accounts” selling fake weight loss jabs.
And in several cases, the body observed that “the illicit provider had copied regulator logos”, including the Care Quality Commission’s and the General Pharmaceutical Council’s (GPhC).
Read more: Attack of the clones: ‘Patients will fall into trap’
One pharmacy reported that they only discovered their online presence had been cloned after they were “approached by a patient” who had bought a counterfeit Mounjaro pen from a site posing as their pharmacy “for a quarter of the market price”, the NPA said.
Another pharmacy discovered that a patient who ordered a GLP-1 from an illicit provider had received a pen with “no needle” that was “labelled for another patient”, it added.
The NPA found that although pharmacies have reported these issues to social media companies, 96% of respondents felt they had received an “insufficient response”, while 92% felt the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) had “not responded adequately”.
“Tougher enforcement action”
The body urged the government to take “stronger action to keep patients safe” and to “reintroduce pre-Brexit rules that provided a list of all regulated online pharmacies as well as logos for webpages”.
It also called on the government to introduce a “new ‘.pharmacy’ domain name – similar to the ‘.gov’ domain for governmental bodies – to clearly identify regulated pharmacy websites”.
And it said the MHRA should take “tougher enforcement action”, adding that pharmacies believe the regulator’s current efforts are “a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the challenge”.
Read more: Online gang sentenced after counterfeit POM bust
MHRA head of intelligence enforcement Tim Duffield told C+D that the medicines regulator takes all reports “extremely seriously” and will be “reaching out to the NPA to gather a better understanding of the nature of these claims”.
The MHRA’s criminal enforcement unit “works tirelessly to take action against those unlawfully trading in medicines, including online and will continue to take enforcement action where appropriate”, he said.
Duffield highlighted that MHRA teams “have made significant seizures and arrests, preventing millions of doses of potentially dangerous products reaching patients and denying criminals millions of pounds in illegal profits and this work is ongoing”.
And he added that the body “continues to work with partners across government, enforcement agencies, and wider partners to tackle the threat of unauthorised medicines being supplied online”.
Read more: Fake Mounjaro pens supplied through UK online pharmacy
NPA board member Sehar Shahid said that patients “should be wary of any provider that is offering medicines at a price that is too good to be true and are not offering any consultations before prescribing”.
She argued that social media companies “have not done enough to prevent a booming market for counterfeit medicines” flourishing on their platforms.
Read more: Do not ‘risk health’ by buying illegal meds online, urges MHRA
“We need tougher enforcement action, and the government should put stronger safeguards in place to help patients clearly identify regulated providers online,” she said.
It comes after Shahid shared with C+D last month that her pharmacy’s social media videos about its weight loss services were duplicated by a fake online pharmacy trying to sell weight loss drugs at half the price.
