Why should you be concerned with supply chain integrity?

Before making the decision to import medication from overseas you should give due consideration to supply chain integrity, or, in plain English, how can you be certain the medication you have ordered and paid for is what it claims to be?

Hepatitis C medications are especially inviting for online scammers due to the incredibly high price tag of the originator medications (Harvoni treatment in the US, for example, costs $94,000). Before buying any medications over the Internet, it is important to thoroughly research the people with whom you are dealing.

How can I check out an online drug supplier?

This is such an important subject we have an entire page dedicated to how to check our the credentials and bonafides of FixHepC. You can use this approach to check out anyone else. Hepatitis C generics have been in the market for over 2 years, so if you can’t find information about a supplier, at best they are new and at worst they are another fly-by-night Internet pop up intent on defrauding unwary buyers.

Check the drug manufacturer

Just as there are good and poor quality cars, so too there are good and poor quality medications. Most of us can tell the difference between a good quality car, and a poor quality car, but with medications what do you get? A box, containing a bottle, containing some pills. You only have to walk into a pharmacy to know that a box of pills can be made very inexpensively, so judging on packaging is unlikely to be helpful. What you need to know is that the pills themselves contain the required medication(s) in the required doses, and that these are what is called “bioavailable” meaning they get into your body and work as expected. FixHepC removes the guesswork on this by using manufacturers who have performed bioequivalene testing, and who have shared that data with us.

Testing Hepatitis C medications bought online

Here is a fact – no one can judge if a pill contains what it should just by looking at it.

With routine pharmacy medications we place complete trust in the supply chain that delivered that medication. While the FixHepC supply chain is very short – Manufacturer – Distributor – FedEx/DHL/EMS – You – we also offer a sanity check. If you want to, simply send us back one tablet and we will run it through qNMR to precisely validate both the medication(s) it contains and the dose. There is a fee of $200 for this service, but it does provide complete peace of mind.

Fake Hepatitis C medications do exist

If you’re an optimist, you might think it won’t happen. If you’re a pessimist, you’ll read Factory making fake Hepatitis C drug raided and be armed with the knowledge that not only is it inevitable, but it is also already happening. This problem will only get worse with time. Since this was written we have seen fake Harvoni® turn up in the mainstream retail pharmacy supply chain.