Legislation passed in February aims to save lives by guaranteeing the authenticity of medicines and fighting the booming online trade in fake ones.

Flashback: Counterfeit medicines

Pills that kill. Europe is in the front line  in the fight against fake medicines.

Most counterfeit drugs are sold online,  but some turn up in pharmacies.

New rules aim to protect us against  people putting our health at risk.

Customs staff are carrying out  routine checks on letters arriving by post.

Most of these packages  contain goods bought online.

Here the customs officer  has found various packets of Viagra.

Genuine Viagra pills are blue inside,  but these are white.

In 2009 European customs officers  seized 11.4 million counterfeit medicines,

The traffickers invest particularly  in the most sought-after drugs.

It's an illegal business that is harming  the pharmaceutical industry

It is not only anti-impotence pills  that are counterfeited,

but also life-saving drugs, like  this one which treats schizophrenia.

Visually it's almost impossible to tell  the counterfeit and genuine drugs apart.

The quality of the packaging  is remarkable.

Only some 60%  of the active pharmaceutical ingredient,

the bit that makes this product work,  was found within it.

For mental health patients  who take this,

any variation, not receiving the full  treatment, can be incredibly hazardous.

but there it's harder to check  their authenticity and composition.

over 50% of medicines  sold on the Internet are counterfeit,

while only a very small proportion  of fake medicines, around 1%,

are likely to enter the supply chain  and end up in pharmacies.

These figures alarmed MEPs,  who are determined to tighten controls.

A law passed in February  introduces new rules

to guarantee the authenticity of medicines  and fight the sale of fake drugs online.

And if it is destroyed  the patient should be suspicious

and ask the pharmacist  if there is something wrong.

In order to protect patients' health  and their own economic interests

in the face of this booming illegal trade,

the industry has developed  a new bar code system,

with which the hospital pharmacist can  check, before dispensing to the patient,

if it is a genuine Baxter product  or a counterfeit.

Even stricter rules  have been introduced for online trade.

Special authorisation will be required  for running an online pharmacy.

A European quality guarantee logo will  show which pharmacies are authorised.

There will be a list  of reliable websites

which will be under review  on a permanent basis

in order to check if all the sites  which have the logo are still reliable.

"THERE WILL BE A LIST OF RELIABLE  WEBSITES." -MARISA MATIAS

Most fake medicines are produced  in illegal laboratories like this one,

In 2009 an Interpol operation  in South-East Asia

led to the closure of  over 100 illegal pharmacies

and the confiscation  of 20 million fake drugs.

Faced with this illegal trade that  causes thousands of deaths globally,

the Member States  will be able to use sanctions

against traffickers of counterfeit drugs  who put people's health at risk.