Almost 10-12 percent of 3,700 types of medicines being imported to Armenia are fake, according to Emil Gabrielyan, Director of the RA Ministry of Health’s Center for Pharmaceuticals and Medical Technology Testing.

At the press conference on Wednesday Gabrielyan said the medicine market is not being properly controlled in Armenia yet since there is no constant monitoring held in the sphere.

“Our center is controlling and checking the drugs only legally imported to Armenia at the customs. However, the medicines imported in a roundabout way, is out of our control; and they must periodically be checked by means of monitoring at pharmacies, but we are not entitled to do it yet,” says pharmacist, professor Gabrielyan.

Gabrielyan believes that only my means of monitoring at pharmacies it is possible to clean the medicine market, where not only fake, but also altered expiration date medicines appear.

For example, two weeks ago the National Security Service announced that they had revealed a group of people who had obtained an essential amount of expired date drugs and special devices with the help of their acquaintances and altered their expiration dates.

“This problem will be solved only in case of adopting a new law. Currently draft amendments to the Law on Drugs, and if it is adopted, we will have a wider control authorization,” Gabrielyan says.

The annual turnover of drugs legally imported to Armenia is about $70 million, only 5-7 percent medicines of Armenian production among them.

Mainly antibiotics are being faked: last year the center headed by Gabrielyan revealed an aspirin, which instead of aspirin contained an inert material – chalk; or an antibiotic – Cephazolin, which instead of Cephazolin had penicillin in it, which, according to the specialist, is much weaker and less expensive.

“It was even more dangerous when instead of an antibiotic a quite strong psychotropic drug was imported; that is to say, it was an example of narcotics business, which would do great harm if it appeared at pharmacies,” Gabrielyan says.