Philippines warning over falsified GSK rabies vaccine

The Food and Drug Administration of the Philippines has issued an alert about counterfeit versions of GlaxoSmithKline’s Rabipur PCEC rabies vaccine that could be hazardous.

The fakes – which have been verified as falsified by laboratory analysis – are circulating in the regular supply chain in the Philippines and could “pose potential danger or injury to consumers,” says the FDA. This is the second warning about fake Rabipur in the last 18 months, and earlier in 2019 the agency also found fakes of another rabies vaccine – Sanofi Pasteur’s Verorab – in circulation.

The alert (PDF, in Tagalog) notes that the packaging of the fake is different to the genuine product, for example the label of the original vaccine has a darker shade of grey and bold font format as well as a QR code printed in a lighter ink. Two fake batch numbers have been discovered: 3503 and 3479.