Morocco recently ratified the Council of Europe Convention on the counterfeiting of medical products and similar crimes involving threats to public health (MEDICRIME), thus becoming the 7th non-member State of the Council of Europe to have ratified the Convention .
The MEDICRIME Convention constitutes, for the first time, a binding legal instrument in the field of criminal law by criminalizing counterfeiting, but also the manufacture and distribution of medical products put on the market without authorization or in violation of safety standards.
Likewise, the convention ratified by the Kingdom is intended to protect public health by introducing penal sanctions and measures for the prevention and protection of victims. The Convention, which is open to countries worldwide, also provides a framework for international cooperation and measures to improve coordination at the national level.
Joined by MoroccoLatestNews UK on this subject, Dr. Hamza Guedira, President of the National Council of the Order of Pharmacists (CNOP), believes that Morocco’s ratification of this convention can only be beneficial for operators in the sector.
” As a pharmacist who watches over the quality and circuits of the drug, this agreement is of great importance. Fortunately Morocco has always been very strict in this matter. And today, this ratification of the Convention by the Kingdom is only the crowning of a whole process which has always been respected.“, says Dr. Guedira.
In terms of medicine, the president of the CNOP believes that Morocco has absolutely no problem in this sense and identifies the problem very well. On the other hand, Dr. Guedira maintains that there will be an effort to be made with all that is dermo-cosmetic product, food supplements and medical devices which are sold almost everywhere and do not respect the legal circuit in certain cases. ” We will therefore be led to make an effort in this direction.“, he insisted.
” Our supervisory ministry, which is the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, is very aware of this problem. And besides, there is a lot of work being done in this direction to identify the market and ensure the good health of our fellow citizens.“, notes Dr. Guedira, before emphasizing “ that it is certain that there must be respect for the articles of this convention ratified by Morocco“.
To conclude, the President of the CNOM considers that today, ” there is a great effort made by the supervising ministry through the direction of the drugs and the pharmacy to possibly rectify the imperfections of our system related to the drug and other paramedical products“.
It should be recalled that Morocco has also deposited the instrument of accession to the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism, which is the first international instrument dealing with both preventive action and the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
Thus, the text responds to the observation that rapid access to financial information or information relating to assets held by criminal organisations, including terrorist groups, is essential to the success of preventive and repressive measures and, in the final analysis, is the best way to destabilize the activities of these organizations.
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