Thursday, March 11, 2010

1.500 million euros in false medicines

I saw yesterday evening in Telecinco that the Spanish we wear out a year 1.500 million euros in false medicines or of imitation (bought by Internet or by other procedures without guarantees). You can see it today more or less everywhere. It counts at random: to approximately 50 average euros for adult. Many seem to me.
Today I look a little. Here there is the press release of the pharmacist Pfizer, who pays and spreads the study (one is grateful that they do not hide behind any foundation): "The market of 'medicines' forged in Spain reaches 1.500 million euros". And here the extensive version of the study: pdf. Pfizer, I remember them, it makes the Viagra, that one from which we receive announcements by e-mail several times a day. And he does not hide that it is a matter in which it has an interest.
That's why it is necessary to take the report with tweezers and to look at it with many cuidadín, as they have not done, I am afraid, most of the means. As it looks like Pfizer a survey has done online in several countries of Europe, of which in Spain 1.000 interviews have been done. There is title role neither in the press release nor in the widest dossier, which makes to suspect already, although according to the news about The Country, about which perhaps he has asked about his account, the study has been realized "following the criteria of population of the database of Eurostat and a panel of selection of recruiting of interrogated persons with the criteria of regulation of the quality certificate on line ESOMAR". For lack of more detail, this would mean, I understand, that it is not an autochosen sample, and that enough information is known associate demographic of the interrogated persons as to know that the composition of the sample does not differ substantially from that of the population (except, I suppose, in the key topic of the access to Internet and familiarity with his use). Well, let's assume for the time being that the sample is "good" and we see what they have found out.
In the press release it is said that the study "sample that almost a third (29,8 %) of 1.000 Spanish interrogated persons admits to have bought prescription medicines across inadequate or illicit practices, what means that approximately 11 million persons in our country have practised this risk consumption". This fact stands out also on the page 7 of the dossier, although there it is said that the study suggests this fact.
Be fixed in the phrase: "he admits to have bought prescription medicines across inadequate or illicit practices". Let's see the question where the citizens "recognized" this: "Has he ever acquired without recipe prescription medicines?". 29,8 % said that yes. But that thing about "inadequate and illicit practices" is an addenda of the report that links surreptitiously that one 29,8 % with the buy for rare, like Internet channels, with danger of falsifications (and of losses for the pharmacists), which is the general topic of the report.
In fact, the proper report says, but not in the out-standing section, but between lines, on the page 8:
Between the persons in Spain who admitted to buy medicines of prescription inadequate across practices or illicit, almost one of every five (18 %) did it across Internet.
18 % of 29,8 % is 5,4 % of the interrogated persons (all of them for Internet, remember), or, if it is preferred, approximately 2 million persons. Nothing is said on where his medicines have bought without recipe the rest (82 % of those who did it) but I imagine that immense most of them would be... in the drugstores, where often, as we all know, the fat sight is done, and there sell medicines that theoretically need recipe without her. Therefore, with zero loss for the pharmacists, and increasing in zero euro the account of the market of falsified medicines (although there can be damages of another type, skylight).
What it takes me, again to the holder of 1.500 million euros. It is emphasized also on the page 7 of the report, as one of the results "suggested" by the same one, but he does not say how they have found out it (perhaps calculating a percentage of an European global estimation, that we do not know where from it goes out) either anywhere.
The accounts do not salt me for any side. Supposing that to 2 millions that they bought for Internet we were adding them, what I, another million that they have bought for other insecure routes (if this fact was in the survey, they would have told it to us, but well), 3 million buyers go out for us for routes started to the fraud. If absolutely everything bought was fraudulent (it 62 % of the times is, according to the proper report, a p. 12), the expense average for every buyer for rare routes, it would be still 500 euros. and they do it to save!!!
It is going to be that not.

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