Poorva Chavan
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Written By: Poorva Chavan | Updated : February 25, 2016 1:13 PM IST
Recently there has been a huge hue and cry about medicines being fake or duplicate. You might buy your drugs from a trusted source, but there's no way you can tell whether these medicines are original and not counterfeit.
In the wake of all this, a WhatsApp forward, telling you how to verify the authenticity of your medicines by sending a code to a particular mobile number, has been doing rounds. The forward says you can find out if your medicines are original or fake by sending the batch number of your medicine via SMS to 9901099010. The forward says that after you send the batch number, you will get an SMS with the correct batch number and the name of the pharmaceutical company that manufactures the medicine.
Then you can cross check with the batch number on your medicine. The number has to be same. If it is not, your medicine is counterfeit and, in that case, you should resend the same message, to register a complaint.
Is it a hoax?
On looking for some answers online, I found that a company called PharmaSecure had launched this software where you could SMS the authentication code printed on the medicine to the above-mentioned number, and it would verify the medicine for you. The service was not just limited to sending an SMS, but one could also call the number and verify their medicine. You could also log on to their website--www.VerifyMyMedicine.com and verify your medicine. I tried calling the number many times but the number seemed to be out of service, and the domain of the website is up for sale.
Note that the medicine needs to have an authentication code, and you can't just SMS its batch number, as the WhatsApp forward says. For the medicine to have the authentication code, any pharmaceutical company has to be registered with PharmaSecure. According to a few reports, only a few companies like Lupin and Unichem had started implementing the authentication code, and a few other companies were supposed to join the league. However, all these reports were published in 2012 and 2013, and there's no current news about this software.
Taking all these factors into consideration, one cannot call this WhatsApp forward a hoax but it is definitely outdated, and one should not SMS the details of their medicines to this number because it doesn't work.
Image source: Shutterstock (For representational purposes only)
