Eleazar, Djamir C.

SN:13

2DPH

The reviewed article was entitled Counterfeit Drug Demand: Perceptions of policy makers and community pharmacist in Sudan. The article was all about the widespread of counterfeit drug trade that can be a substantial threat to both the publics health and the pharmaceutical industry. According to the World Health Organization a counterfeit drug is described as a medicine which is deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to the identity and/or source. Counterfeiting can apply to both branded and generic products and counterfeit products may include products with the correct ingredients or with the wrong ingredients, without active ingredients, with insufficient active ingredients or with fake packaging. The study was conducted by interviewing a 3 community pharmacist from Khartoum and 2 Clinical pharmacists from Gadaref; and 2 Policy makers from the Federal Ministry of Health, 2 Policy makers from the Ministry of Health Khartoum State, and 2 Policy makers from the Ministry of Health Gadaref State. The choice of a Policy Maker was based on his role in the policy-making process or as a head of department with direct links to medicine policy or medicine regulation. The interviews were conducted at the offices of policy makers and community pharmacists so that they felt secure and had the confidence to speak freely. The interview includes the question of how they understand: the meaning of counterfeit drugs, presence of counterfeit drugs in Sudanese market, vulnerability to counterfeit drugs, price-quality inference, awareness of societal consequences of purchasing counterfeit drugs, education pertaining to counterfeit drugs. The result of the conducted interview was the factors that policy makers and community pharmacists think that they may increase vulnerability to counterfeit drugs among consumers in Sudan and the developing countries in general. The findings were consistent with previous research with special emphasis on the role of high prices and the unaffordability of medicines in increasing vulnerability to counterfeit drugs. there is a major difference between consumers in developed and developing countries regarding medicines. It is evident that counterfeit pharmaceuticals, regardless of their price, were the least common among products knowingly purchased by consumers in developed countries. Perhaps the reason behind this is that consumers in developed countries make their purchasing decision about counterfeit goods for the sake of saving money, although they can afford to buy the genuine article. In contrast, in Sudan, according to the interviewees, poor consumers have no choice other than to purchase the counterfeit because the genuine lifesaving medicine is, simply, not affordable.