Last month 45 countries took part in the internet-based campaign Operation Pangea III to tackle online counterfeit drug crime. As a result, regulators recovered thousands of illicit and counterfeit drugs valued at US$2·6 million, 76 people were arrested across the globe, 694 website investigations were opened, and 290 illegal websites have already been shut down. The operation involved several ...

OBJECTIVE To understand legislation combating counterfeit drugs in Hong Kong. DESIGN This study consisted of two parts. In part I, counterfeit drugs–related ordinances and court cases were reviewed. In part II, indepth interviews of the stakeholders were described. SETTING Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS All Hong Kong ordinances were screened manually to identify those combating counterfeit drugs...

India, the leading supplier of low-cost generic drugs to Africa, has begun fi ghting back to counter the confusion surrounding counterfeit drugs in the region. A raft of new and proposed anti-counterfeit laws could potentially deprive Africa of aff ordable, essential medicines. The immediate cause of concern is Kenya’s Anti-Counterfeit Act 2008, which came into eff ect in July, 2009. The new la...

OBJECTIVE To identify the main counterfeit drugs seized by the Brazilian Federal Police and the states where seizures have been made. METHODS A retrospective descriptive study on expert reports produced by criminal investigators of the Federal Police between January 2007 and September 2010, in relation to counterfeit drugs, was carried out. RESULTS The drugs with greatest numbers of seizure...

Diagnosis is "the act of identifying a disease, illness, or problem by examining someone or something." When an individual with acute fever presents for clinical attention, accurate diagnosis leading to specific, prompt treatment often saves lives. As applied to malaria, not only individual patient diagnosis is important but also assessing population-level malaria prevalence using appropriate d...

Economical and reliable thin layer chromatography methods for rapid screening of counterfeit drugs are described. The methods, which can be carried out in the field by inspectors with limited expertise, are based on the use of portable kits with standard reference tablets to eliminate weighing. Separations are performed on silica gel layers containing fluorescent indicator, and separated spots ...

Fake news has become a hotly debated topic in journalism. In this paper, we present our entry to the 2017 Fake News Challenge which models the detection of fake news as a stance classification task that finished in 11th place on the leader board. Our entry is an ensemble system of classifiers developed by students in the context of their coursework. We show how we used the stacking ensemble met...

OBJECTIVE To explore the evidence available of poor-quality (counterfeit and substandard) medicines in the literature. DESIGN Systematic review. DATA SOURCES Databases used were EMBASE, MEDLINE, PubMed and the International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, including articles published till January 2013. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA Prevalence studies containing original data. WHO definitions (1992) used...