Inauguration of the sanofi-aventis Central Anti-Counterfeit Laboratory in Tours

08-Sep-2008 - France

The sanofi-aventis Central Anti-Counterfeit Laboratory was officially inaugurated at the Tours pharmaceutical plant (in the Department of Indre-et-Loire, France) by Hervé Novelli, Minister of State to the Minister for the Economy, Industry and Employment with responsibility for Business, Trades, Small- and Medium-Sized Entreprises, Tourism and services, 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:

- 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

- 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.

According to the company, 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 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.

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/86715/inauguration-of-the-sanofi-aventis-central-anti-counterfeit-laboratory-in-tours.html