Sciensano & Illegal medicines

The Sciensano's Medicines and health products service develops methods to detect illegal medicines, analyses products intercepted during seizures and assesses their health risks. 

The Sciensano's Medicines and health products service, in collaboration with the Universities of Ghent and Liege, develops methods to distinguish illegal medicines from legal medicines.

One of them involves detecting impurities present in counterfeit medicines and observing how the real and fake medicines propagate light.

In the long term, these methods will lead to the development of portable devices: customs officers and inspectors will then be able to seize counterfeit medicines on site (at ports, borders, etc.).

At the request of the Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products (FAMHP), the laboratories of the Sciensano's Medicines and health products service analyses the content of medicines seized in stores or intercepted by Customs to detect and quantify their active substances. 

To control dietary supplements, the Federal Agency for Food Chain Safety (FAFCS) sends samples to Sciensano to detect toxic substances (adulteration).