AstraZeneca is a research-based pharmaceutical company, and our paramount responsibility continues to be the safety of our products and the well-being of the people who use them. Ideally, a medicine would target only the disease that it is meant to treat and would not have any other effect. In reality, though, despite the best efforts of scientists, such a medicine does not yet exist, and all medicines have possible side effects that some patients may experience. The benefits of a medicine must therefore be weighed against its side effects and the acceptable level of risk decided upon by the company developing the medicine, by the regulators who approved it for marketing, and, ultimately, by healthcare professionals. We aim to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of each of our products through a number of mechanisms.
Product Safety
We dedicate more than 500 drug safety professionals to the task of ensuring that we meet our commitment to patient safety. For each of our products, we assign a drug safety physician who closely monitors the medicine throughout its life cycle, from the development pipeline to pharmacy shelves.
Fighting drug counterfeiters
Drug counterfeiting is a growing challenge in the United States, as the number of counterfeit drugs that make it to the American marketplace continues to increase. Not only is the counterfeiting of pharmaceutical drugs criminal, but it also threatens to harm the health and wellness of patients. A counterfeit product is one that is deliberately and fraudulently labeled in a way that suggests that it is authentic, approved, and made by the legitimate manufacturer. AstraZeneca is aggressively pursuing a number of product-security efforts to help ensure that patients receive genuine medicines.
- AstraZeneca uses both overt and hidden security features on packaging of certain products. We are currently evaluating whether to employ them on packaging for all our medicines
- We work closely with wholesalers on strategies that promote a safe and secure supply of medicines
- We continue to investigate new security technologies, such as the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) to help prevent misuse of our products by enabling more precise tracking of shipments. In addition, AstraZeneca fully supports the efforts of government officials to protect the supply of pharmaceutical drugs. We endorse stricter criminal penalties for those who violate anti counterfeiting laws, and we believe these penalties not only will help deter counterfeiting but will also more adequately punish those convicted of crimes that put consumers at risk
