Almost 2 million packages of medicines have been verified and dispensed per month

Almost 2 million packages of medicines have been verified and dispensed per month

The Latvian medicines verification system, continuing its work and all its users performing their duties, 1.94 million packs of medicines have been verified and dispensed from the system during October.

The number of packages dispensed in the Latvian medicines verification system is slowly increasing, as at the beginning of the year an average of 1.6 million packages of medicines were dispensed from the system per month.

Manufacturers also continue to upload information about their products (72 products were uploaded to the system in October) as well as product batches (999 product batches were uploaded in October). More than 5.41 million active product packages were uploaded into system during October.

As specified by the system requirements, the Latvian medicines verification system continues to generate alerts, which account for only 0.09% of all transactions. The Latvian Medicines Verification Organization has no reports of potential cases of falsification.

The medicines verification or safety testing system is maintained by the Latvian Medicines Verification Organization, and its aim is to prevent the possibility of falsified medicines from reaching consumers. The system has been implemented and since 9 February 2019 has been operating in more than 30 European countries. The basic principle of the verification system is that each medicine packaging is marked with a unique code during the manufacturing process, and this code is checked just before the medicine is sold in a pharmacy or used in a medical institution. The system covers prescription medicines and one over-the-counter medicine, omeprazole.

The basis for the establishment of the verification system is the EU Falsified Medicines Directive (2011/62/EU) and the delegated regulation which defines detailed rules for the safety features appearing on the packaging of medicinal products for human use (EU 2016/161).