From 2-8 December 2019, Fight the Fakes and partners celebrated the 2nd annual Fight the Fakes Week (FTF Week) and it was a great success! Under the dedicated theme ‘Be aware, speak up, fight the fakes’, the FTF Week saw high engagement from partner organisations and other organisations and individuals working in the area of medicine quality.
From your everyday social media user, students, pharmacists, doctors, academics, to global health organisations and private healthcare companies, the profile of the Fight the Fakes campaign achieved extraordinary acknowledgement throughout the week both on social media and media, and during various events on the ground.
Social media highlights:
- Tweets from @FightTheFakes Twitter gained on average 43 likes and 30 retweets per day during 2-8 December 2019. In comparison, in 2018, Fight the Fakes’ personal tweets gained on average 13 likes and 9 retweets per day.
- Overall, dedicated Fight the Fakes Week messages reached 4,179,000 users (in 2018: 1,180,000) between 2-8 December 2019. This is a nearly 350%-increase from the total reach during the 1st Fight the Fakes Week in December 2018.
Media highlights:
- The press release which was sent out prior to the start of the 2019 FTF Week was picked up by 8 different outlets across Europe, incl. EU, Global, Spanish, French, and Polish outlets.
- The FTF Week took spotlight in a lengthy article in Health Policy Watch.
- An op-ed by Oksana Pyzik, founder of UCL Fight the Fakes, and Flandrie Habyarimana, R.Ph President of the Rwanda Community Pharmacists Union (RCPU) and Eastern & Southern Africa Regional Representative at the Commonwealth Pharmacists Association (CPA), was featured in the New Times Rwanda and highlighted the important role of pharmacists in the fight against falsified medicines.
Other highlights:
- Our partners, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), in collaboration with the Global Health Initiative (GHI), a student-led initiative at the Graduate Institute Geneva, and the World Heart Federation, organized a half-day event on Friday, 6th December 2019. First, a workshop discussing the global implications of fake medicines was held at IFPMA’s office in Geneva, followed by a panel discussion at the Graduate Institute on how industry and civil society are responding to the threat of fake medicines to public health, and how technology can be effectively leveraged in the fight against counterfeits.
- The Fight the Fakes chapter at the University College London (UCL Fight the Fakes) organized a panel discussion on 5th December 2019 focusing on harnessing the power of technology in the fight against substandard and falsified medicines.
A big thank you to everyone who engaged with the campaign during the 2019 FTF Week online and/ or offline! Let’s keep up the great momentum for 2020 and continue raising awareness about the dangers that substandard and falsified medicines pose to people’s safety and wellbeing!
Read our review report with all highlight from the 2019 Fight the Fakes Week here!
