EMVO Forum highlights rising threats of pharmaceutical crime
At the beginning of March, the European Medicines Verification Organization (EMVO) together with National Medicines Verification Organizations held a forum “Pharmaceutical Crime in Europe and Beyond” to address a global issue – the growing risks of pharmaceutical crime in Europe. The event brought together specialists and experts to discuss improvements in the safety of the medicine supply chain.
As invited speakers and panelists in Forum were Agnès Mathieu-Mendes (Head of Unit, DG SANTE, European Commission), Răzvan Mihai Prisada (President of National Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices of Romania), Oscar Alarcón (Executive Secretary of the MEDICRIME Convention), Davide D’Auria (Head of Economic Crime Unit, Europol), Martin Burman (Chair, WGEO), Anita Sands (Technical Officer, World Health Organisation), Niall McCarthy (Regional Director EMEA, Pharmaceutical Security Institute) and Maximilian Wilms-Posen (Policy Officer, ABDA - Federal Union of German Associations of Pharmacists).
The forum included several panel discussions where experts from European security agencies, industry organizations, and international institutions talked about current threats from pharmaceutical crime, developments in combating counterfeit medicines, and the importance of the European Medicines verification system (EMVS) in ensuring a secure supply chain.
The discussions also included exchanges of ideas on policy solutions, new technologies to prevent counterfeiting, and collaboration between regulators, law enforcement, and supply chain participants.
Inese Erdmane highlights: "Criminals are becoming more sophisticated. We need to be proactive rather than reactive. The legal pharmaceutical distribution chain is safe, but the risk lies in online or web sales. We need to ask those who buy outside the legal chain: why? By understanding the reasons, it will be much easier to prevent the purchase and use of falsified medicines online."
As EMVS is a unique system established and managed by the private pharmaceutical sector under a stakeholder model, cooperation with governmental institutions and national competent authorities is crucial.
On behalf of LZVO, I.Erdmane expressed gratitude to the forum organizers for the valuable discussions and for highlighting this concerning issue on an international scale.
The forum program can be viewed in more detail here.