Table 1 Key definitions
Life saving drug | A pharmaceutical product designed for or used in saving lives. |
Lifestyle drug | A pharmaceutical product characterized as improving the quality of life rather than alleviating or curing disease. |
Spurious/falsely-labelled/falsified/counterfeit (SFFC) medicines | Medicines that are deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to identity and/or source. |
Counterfeit drug | â–ª Deliberately and fraudulently produced and/or mislabeled with respect to identity and/or source to make it appear to be a genuine product. |
| Â | â–ª It contains less or more than the required amount of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) used in the authentic version or even contains the correct amount of API but have been manufactured in unsanitary and unsafe conditions [11]. |
Substandard drug | Genuine drug products which do not meet quality specifications set for them. If substandard drugs are knowingly produced to make an unlawful product, they too are considered counterfeit. |
Falsified drug | It usually has no active ingredient or dangerous substances and can cause serious harm to patients. |
Gray pharmaceutical | Space is emerging where illicit profiteers are ostensibly marketing competitive brands without regulatory approval. |