In a bid to ensure safer medicinal products on the market, the European Commission will be putting in place new compulsory features such as a unique identifier and an anti-tampering device.

The safety features are meant to better protect European citizens against falsified medicine that could contain active ingredients of low quality or in the wrong dosage.

The safety features would guarantee medicine authenticity for the benefit of patients and businesses and strengthen the security of the medicine supply chain, from manufacturers to distributors to pharmacies and hospitals, a spokesman said.,

The new measures supplement the Falsified Medicines Directive, which aims to prevent fake medicines from reaching patients, allow EU citizens to buy medicine online through verified sources and ensure that only high quality ingredients are used for the production of medicine in the EU.

The regulation will enter into force three years after publication.

Falsified medicine is marketed as being real and authorised. As it would not have been properly evaluated to check quality, safety and efficacy, as required by strict EU authorisation procedures, such products could be detrimental to people’s health.

Falsified medicine is considered to be a major threat to public health.