Expired medicines destroyed

A STEAMROLLER crushes P15.1 million worth of expired antidiabetic Diamicron tablets at the municipal hall of San Pedro in Laguna. PHOTO COURTESY OF SAN PEDRO POLICE OFFICE

SAN PEDRO, Laguna—Authorities on Monday destroyed P15.1 million worth of expired tablets of Diamicron, a brand of medicine used to control the blood sugar of persons with diabetes.

A steamroller crushed a total of 840,000 tablets on the grounds of the municipal hall. The drugs were seized from a house in Barangay Langgam here in March last year, where these were being repacked illegally, according to Supt. Chito Bersaluna, municipal police chief.

Intended as evidence in court, the tablets had been kept at the police station for almost a year. However, the pharmaceutical company, Les Laboratories Servier, did not seek to pursue legal action when authorities failed to arrest a Pakistani suspected of being the source of the tablets.

The Pakistani, whose identity was not disclosed, distributed the expired tablets to a community in Langgam last year and offered to pay residents to tamper with the expiry dates on their blister packs, said John Sacriz, managing director of IP Manila Associates. The private firm is investigating cases involving intellectual property rights.

“The residents became suspicious of the tablets. We and the pharmaceutical company are actually thankful to them because it was a community effort to bring this to the attention of the authorities,” Sacriz said.

A Diamicron tablet sold at P18 but Sacriz said counterfeit medicines fetched a much lower price in small clinics and drugstores, especially in the provinces.

Sacriz said data from the Department of Health showed that 10 percent of the medicines distributed in the Philippines were either fake or expired. “That means in every 10 tablets, one of them is fake,” he said.

The Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) region is tagged as a major destination of counterfeit medicines, he added.