Fake Tylenol Being Sold on Supermarket Shelves

On Monday, the Ministry of Health and Wellness issued an advisory informing of counterfeit Tylenol being sold in various supermarkets across the country. The phony product bears batch number GS13790, with an expiration date of March 2024. To safeguard your health, shoppers are being advised to avoid purchasing the medication. Currently, the ministry is on a mission to remove as many of the bogus Tylenol off supermarket shelves. But how did these fake Tylenol get into the country and were they sourced from individuals authorized to sell pharmaceuticals in Belize? We spoke with Chrystal Samouge, the Director of the Drug Inspectorate Unit. Here is what she told us.

Chrystal Samouge

Dr. Chrystal Samouge, Director, Drug Inspectorate Unit

“In this particular case we actually received an alert, someone was concerned. This is something we do encourage the public, if you feel something is wrong let us know so that we can start an investigation. So we received the alert, we went out and conducting something known as market surveillance. We got samples at the location where the medication was found and collected it and we were able to get the samples and confirmed with Johnson and Johnson that the product is not their product. We are still in the early stages of this investigation, the first thing we want to do is remove it. When we are satisfied that we have removed what is available on the market then we are going to sit down and look at the quantities in each district. In this case we are trying to track down the source. What we know is that we have not found the batch in our importation database which is a database that includes all the medication that has received authorization from the Ministry of Health and Wellness. We have not seen this batch in our importation database. So it likely means that it came in illegally and that is something we are trying to determine, who is brining it in and how is it that they are brining it in.”