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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns all healthcare professionals and the public on significant risks associated with the growing internet sales of medicines. The recent surge of COVID-19 infections due to the Delta variant created an increase demand in certain health products, particularly medicines used in the treatment of COVID-19 such as Remdesivir, Tocilizumab, Baricitinib, Favipiravir and others. This sudden demand has attracted unscrupulous persons from distributing and selling those products online at a much higher price even without the required License to Operate from this Office.

Buying medicines over the internet can pose serious health risk. Some of the medicines being offered for sale are unregistered. Even though the medicines bought online look the same, there is no guarantee that these are genuine. A medicine bought online may contain no active ingredient, too much or too little active ingredients which may result to the condition not being treated correctly. Also, the medicines may not be stored correctly in accordance with its appropriate storage conditions.

Currently, FDA only allows online ordering services provided that the seller has an existing licensed-pharmacy with physical address. Online ordering services are additional activities of the pharmacy subject for approval of FDA. The patient or customer is required to present a prescription or e-prescription upon ordering.

Consumers are advised to purchase all their medicines only from legitimate FDA-licensed establishments and drug outlets.

To report on the illicit and illegal online selling of medicines, kindly email us at [email protected] or eReport at www.fda.gov.ph/ereport. You may also call the Center for Drug Regulation and Research at telephone number (02) 8809-5596. For suspected adverse drug reactions (ADR), kindly report immediately through this link: https://primaryreporting.who-umc.org/Reporting/Reporter?OrganizationID=PH by filling out the required fields.

For more information and inquiries, please email us at [email protected].

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