Sanofi-aventis, a leading global pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops and distributes therapeutic solutions, has announced that its central anti-counterfeit laboratory was inaugurated at the Tours pharmaceutical plant, France by Hervé Novelli, Minister of State to the Minister for the Economy, Industry and Employment and Jean-François Dehecq, chairman of sanofi-aventis.

The central anti-counterfeit laboratory is an integral part of the sanofi-aventis Group's initiative against counterfeiting. The laboratory, with its team of experts and state-of-the-art equipment, has a three-fold remit viz., to conduct direct examinations of packaging items and leaflets as well as definitive chemical tests on suspect samples of commonly counterfeited products, to develop test methods and distribute them globally in order to allow any industrial plant in the world to inspect and test, with the same criteria, the suspect products corresponding to those manufactured by sanofi-aventis and to centralise 'identity cards' for the counterfeit drugs found, in a single, central data base, to make it possible to compare different types of counterfeit.

The central anti-counterfeit laboratory is a key tool at the disposal of the regulatory agencies, the police and the customs as well, of course, as the courts in France and in any other country involved.

Aware of the threat to public health posed by counterfeit drugs, the sanofi-aventis Group is making a solid commitment to combating this curse by gathering as much information and evidence as possible to help the authorities to fight efficiently against this dangerous, criminal enterprise.

To this end, substantial human and material resources are being committed to the project and all the group's divisions are being mobilised. And after just over two years, the results are already concrete. In 2007, more than 2.5 million doses of counterfeited sanofi-aventis products were discovered throughout the world.

Mobilisation of the group has spectacularly increased the rate of identification of suspected counterfeit products. This will helpful for discoveries that could be categorised as 'accidental': identified by locally based institutions or sales representatives, reported by patients or pharmacovigilance, discovered by the police or customs, discoveries associated with routine market monitoring operations - by the anonymous purchasing of certain drugs in pharmacies in a given country or town, or on the Internet, discoveries associated with information from other pharmaceutical companies with samples provided for rapid testing and comparison.

Confronted with the sophisticated arsenal at the disposal of drug counterfeiters, Jean-François Dehecq advocates a zero-tolerance policy.

"We have for too long a time under-estimated the problem of drug counterfeiting-what used to be a cottage industry is today a fully fledged industrial process," declared Jean-François Dehecq.

"Given the urgency of the situation, we have to be intransigent, notably on three specific issues: enhancing the efficacy of international police enquiries; updating the penal code which is currently insufficiently dissuasive; and regulating drug distribution networks, especially those which can be exploited to promote counterfeit drugs," he concluded.

"Europe will only be able to provide a fully comparable advantage within a fair and legal framework. Counterfeiting, whose growth is a cause for concern worldwide, is one of the most aggressive forms of unfair and illegal business practice," declared Hervé Novelli.

The counterfeiting of drugs is a major public health problem and no country or therapeutic class is spared. In 2006, counterfeit drugs accounted for more than 10 per cent of the global pharmaceutical market, i.e. about 45 billion Euros. In some countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, up to 30 per cent of the drugs on the market may be counterfeit. Developed countries are also affected with counterfeit products having invaded the regular distribution networks. The statistics point to a sharp rise in the rate of confiscation of counterfeit drugs by European customs services with over four million boxes of counterfeit drugs impounded at borders in 2007, an increase of 51 per cent over 2006-and the rate of confiscation rose by 384 per cent between 2005 and 2006.