Campaign to combat counterfeit medications

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ContactContact PersonPerson -- AndreAndre Koga,Koga, FEBRAFFEBRAF BrazilBrazil

Medicines are the most counterfeit products on the world market, and it is a public health issue for all countries across the globe, however, even with the known magnitude, this is not a matter addressed on a daily basis by health professionals and undergraduate students. Combat counterfeit medicines is included in the 19th FIP Development Goals – Patient Safety, having said that, FEBRAF joined APEFyB, Peru; CAPSI, Canada; IPGA-SF, India; OEQF, Guatemala to support the implementation of this goal and raise awareness to our public on this regard, in addition to strengthening connections between associations in the process.

The project took place on the social media of the participating associations, more specifically on the Instagram platform, as will be detailed below. In this collaboration, each country produced a sequence of works, such as: 1.Photo campaign among the members of their organizations, with acknowledging

phrases. Short video (approximately two minutes), briefly exposing the initiatives carried out by their respective country to combat the medicine counterfeiting. Poster, with data and numbers related to the initiatives of each country to fight this public health issue

The development of the project took place over approximately two months, starting in November 2021 with the call and search for associations interested in contributing to the project, and ending in January 2022 with posts of the work carried out by the participating associations during the last two months of 2021..

Figure 1. AEPFyB, OEQF, IPGA-SF collaboration

As the project took place virtually and through social networks, its implementation occurred through posts of the materials produced by each association. The posts were made through the collaborative post tool, where there are two different accounts for the same post.

With this, posts were made throughout a week and each association was assigned a day. On the designated day, that association would post its work in the collaboration format with the official FEBRAF account. As only one association was posting per day, the other associations were encouraged to promote the campaign's posts even if it was not their day of posting.

Therefore, the project was finalized with the posts of the works of each country, in addition to a "thank you" post.

The reach of the project was awesome thanks to the promotion made by each association, which brought different followers from all countries that were part of the initiative.

The feedback received

from associations and

followers was great,

highlighting that the

main message of the

project was successfully

conveyed. Furthermore, it was great to see associations simultaneously supporting a single project. This experience will open doors for more collaborations in the future.