Pfizer Asia-Pacific global security director Tetsuya Ikeda said that 154 websites that sold fake products were taken down from 2016 to 2017 at the request of his company. They also requested that the authorities raid 14 shops, two warehouses and one office engaged in similar activities.

"Fake medicine sellers use multiple websites to promote their products. We were able to detect that they had similar phone numbers and bank accounts, and we reported the cases to the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency [BPOM]," he said during a discussion in Jakarta recently.

He added that commonly counterfeited Pfizer products included erectile dysfunction pill Viagra, cholesterol treatment drug Lipitor and painkiller Ponstan.

Moreover, counterfeit Pfizer products are mostly produced and circulated in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2016, 7.3 million doses were seized by authorities around the globe, 5.6 million of which were from the Asia-Pacific region.

"More than half of the doses seized in the Asia-Pacific were in China, where the biggest online marketplaces exist. Pakistan is number two followed by South Korea," Ikeda said.

Oakley Indonesia sport and marketing manager Ricky Muhamad Safir Shatrie said that the eyewear brand frequently reported fake product sellers to online marketplaces to be taken down. The local distributor has also signed agreements with several marketplaces such as Blibli, Zalora and Shopee, with the platforms committing to only sell authentic products.

BPOM distribution and service monitoring director Hardaningsih said that customers needed to keep an eye out for fake medicines and should notify the authorities if the prices were too cheap or wrongly advertised. (dwa)

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