Counterfeit drugs will kill, expert warns

IRISH people will die if nothing is done to stop the Europe-wide increase in the sale of counterfeit drugs, an expert on pharmaceutical fraud warned yesterday.

New research shows one in five Irish people have discovered that on purchase their medicine leaflets are missing, seals are broken or the medicine is contained in foreign packaging, all signs that the chemist might have unwittingly sold them counterfeit drugs.

"There is now a belated and dawning knowledge of the nature and scale of the counterfeiting threat," former British detective superintendent Graham Satchwell told a conference in Dublin last night.