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The Underground Market Of Illegal Generic Drugs On WeChat

2018-01-03 ExpatLife

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While the e-business model based on social media platforms such as WeChat and Weibo is booming in China, an Indian man named Dheeraj (pseudonym) also joined the large community of WeChat business owners selling some of his nation's most famous products, generic drugs.


According to Dheeraj, he studied in China to become a doctor and has now returned to India to work. 


India has always been dubbed as the "world's pharmacy," mainly because of its generic drugs - a pharmaceutical drug that is equivalent to a brand-name product in dosage, strength, route of administration, quality, performance and intended use, but does not carry the brand name. 


image source: dropshipmd.com


The Indian government has granted compulsory licenses for expensive drugs so Indian manufacturers can produce these drugs without fear of being prosecuted under patent law.


According to a Bloomberg report, India's branded drugs and other medical products' overseas sales volume is $11.6 billion, while the country's overseas sales volume of generic drugs reached $16.4 billion in 2016, which is higher than the sales for brand-name drugs. 


India's generic drugs have been attracting patients from around the world for their low costs. In China, the generic drugs are attracting a growing number of low income sick Chinese patients to travel to India for the drugs, or turn to purchasing them through an agent like Dheeraj. 


"There are many people selling generic drugs from Indian in China through WeChat, and most of the sellers are Chinese. However, most of the drugs the Chinese are selling are fake," Dheeraj said. "There are some Indians that also sell generic drugs in China, and most of them are students in China.


The original Glivec produced by Swedish pharmaceutical company Novartis costs 23,500 yuan ($3,400) per box in China, which is only a month's dosage, according to a report by the Global Times in January 2015.


However, the equivalent drugs made by the Indian company NATCO only cost around 1,000 yuan per box. The price can even be lowered to 200 yuan per box if purchased in bulk directly from the manufactures, according to the same Global Times report. 


Breaking the law


According to a report by news portal qq.com in December 2014, the business of buying and selling generic drugs from Indian has become an enormous underground market. 


Some Chinese purchasing agents provide the purchasing invoice to prove the authenticity of the drugs and some local Indians have also started to act as purchasing agents to mail the drugs from India to China directly. 


However, the choice of being a purchasing agent became more dangerous since generic drugs are illegal in China because they are not officially approved. According to the country's drug administration laws, such drugs are regarded as counterfeit and selling those drugs is illegal. 


In September 2013, two Chinese couples were arrested in Guangdong Province. They were charged with the crime of selling "fake drugs" which referred to the drugs they had brought back from India that were labeled "fake" because the drugs had not been licensed by Chinese authorities.


On October 9, 2013, the Fangshan district court in Beijing sentenced a Chinese man to eight months behind bars and a penalty of 2,000 yuan, for buying drugs from India to make profit. 


The most well-known case of all is when Lu Yong, a leukemia patient, was arrested and charged in January 2015 for selling fake drugs to over 1,000 patients like himself. The patients he sold drugs to petitioned the court to release him. 

Source: globaltimes

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