The Shanghai food and drug administration is carrying out a citywide check on local drugstores selling fake medicines bearing similar names to the genuine ones.

The state drug authority has issued a new law prohibiting the sale of healthcare products that mislead customers with similar packaging and names to the original drugs.

"Besides imitating the appearance of genuine medicines, the fake drugs always promise an exaggerated efficacy in curing diseases," Du Bing, an official with the administration, said.

However, the agency has regulated some healthcare products, like dietary supplements, as food rather than medicine, which means they don't have to meet the same safety and efficacy standards as prescription drugs or over-the-counter medicines, experts said.

"Such conformity may cause confusion among customers and create loopholes for opportunistic, unethical pharmaceutical companies," Du said.

According to the rules, local drugstores have to check for unqualified healthcare products and submit a list of their names to the local drug supervision department.

"The new rules will tighten the management of drugstores," Wang Yan, another official from the administration, said.

Liu Xiangyue, head of Shanghai Yifeng Drugstore, said they have identified as many as 70 brands of unqualified health products, most of which exaggerate their curative powers.

"We have already asked all the chain drugstores in the city to take off the unqualified products from the shelves and stop their sale," Liu said.

The FDA has also directed all drugstores to keep comprehensive records of all products sold, including health supplements, cosmetics and disinfectant products. And the records must be kept for at least two years for government monitoring. Previously, only drugs had to be recorded this way.

(China Daily January 8, 2009)