In January 2009, the 124th session of the World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board (EB) discussed the WHO Secretariat’s report on counterfeit medical products (EB124/ 14). The report invited the EB to consider recommending a proposed resolution on counterfeit medical products to the 62nd World Health Assembly (WHA) to be held in Geneva from 18-27 May, 2009. The draft resolution and report sought both a strong mandate on ” counterfeit medical products” and to endorse the Principles and Elements of National Legislation against Counterfeit Medical Products prepared by a multi-stakeholder initiative called the International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (IMPACT).
The report and the draft resolution presented counterfeit medical products as the central health problem pertaining to quality, safety and efficacy of medicines. This gave overwhelming weight to the problem of counterfeit medicines over equally significant and related public health problems of falsely labelled, spurious and substandard drugs.