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Patients At Risk From Fake Drugs
By Thomas Moore
Sky News health correspondent
Updated:08:28, Thursday November 22, 2007

Britain faces a growing threat from fake medicines, the Government's drug safety watchdog has warned.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency says potentially dangerous counterfeit products are being unwittingly prescribed to NHS patients.

New rules to protect patients are expectedFigures obtained by Sky News show that in the last three years at least, 7,700 packs of fake prescription drugs have entered the NHS supply chain to hospitals and pharmacies.

Around 5,000 have never been recovered and may have been taken by NHS patients.

Mick Deats, head of intelligence at the MHRA, said the drugs are likely to have been manufactured abroad in unhygienic conditions with little quality control.

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He said: "All counterfeits are dangerous, whether they have the correct active ingredient in them or not. If patients are taking a drug to stop blood clotting after heart surgery and it hasn't got the active ingredient in it, that represents a major risk."

This year fake batches of a prostate cancer drug, a heart treatment and a tablet for mental illness have been recovered. They contained just three quarters of the proper dose.

There is no evidence that any patients have died as a result of taking the bootleg drugs.

But the MHRA described the counterfeiting of medicines for such serious medical conditions as "sinister".

Anti-counterfeiting officials from around the world are meeting in London today to draw up a global strategy on fake prescription drugs.

The MHRA is expected to announce a new anti-counterfeiting strategy to stop drugs entering the NHS supply chain.

FA Facing £100m Euro 2008 Loss
By Ian Dovaston
Sports correspondent
Updated:04:48, Thursday November 22, 2007

England's failure to qualify for the European Championships next year has left the Football Association with a potential loss of £100m, a football finance expert has told Sky News.

Liverpool's Steven Gerrard could be crucial to England's Euro successThe FA could possibly offset £30m of the lost revenue by taking part in European Championship warm-up games against teams that have qualified, Professor Tom Cannon said.

It could even arrange a home international tournament involving Scotland, he added.

England needed only a draw against Croatia at Wembley to qualify, thanks to Israel's unexpected weekend defeat of Russia.

But the team lost 3-2 and potential money spinning deals will now have to be abandoned.

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Prof Cannon said: "The big losers would be the players. They would average perhaps a £1m each from playing in the European Championships.

"Some of them would get a lot more."

If England did qualify for Euro 2008, the FA could have looked forward to staging perhaps six warm-up games at the new Wembley, bringing in perhaps £8m.


Chelsea's Joe Cole expected to playSponsorship, merchandising, ticketing, TV and prize money would have reaped millions of pounds for the FA.

Without qualification, England are set to get fewer bumper crowds at Wembley during the build-up - though they may be able to arrange games against qualifiers like Italy, France and Russia.

Even a home international tournament would not guarantee the number of Wembley games required to offset the losses.

England have not failed to qualify for a major championship since Graham Taylor's side missed out on the 1994 World Cup.

Bobby Robson was the last England manager to fail to qualify for a European Championships 23 years ago.

Water Company Facing Charges Of Lying
Updated:08:15, Thursday November 22, 2007

One of the country's biggest water companies is to be charged by the Serious Fraud Office, it has been revealed.
Severn Trent Water is being accused of lying about its leakage figures to the industry watchdog Ofwat - it faces substantial fines if convicted.

Allegations go back seven yearsInformation given to Ofwat is crucial in determining how much water firms can charge households for water, waste services and the cost of repairing the network of pipes.

The news comes a few days after it emerged that Southern Water faces fines of up to £20.3m for misleading Ofwat by deliberately misreporting customer service information.

Severn Trent says it has been told that no individual member of its staff will be accused of any offence.

The charges relate to information supplied by Severn Trent going back as far as 2000.

In 2005 the SFO told the company it was undertaking a criminal investigation into "alleged reporting irregularities".

Ofwat had been carrying out is own investigation following allegations of false reporting against one of its employees in May 2004.

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It published its findings almost two years later - and Severn Trent had to apologise to customers and reduce its prices.

The company has acknowledged that the regulator "may expect further amends to be made to customers".

It serves some eight million people across a large part of the country, from mid-wales to Rutland and Bristol to the Humber.

Chief Executive Tony Wray said: "We will now study carefully the details of the charges, which relate to the responsibilities of a previous regime."

The group is also facing Ofwat penalties over "misstated" customer relations data and added today that it was "unable to give a reliable estimate" over the potential fines it faces.

In April 2006, Severn Trent also said it had uncovered evidence of the "misstatements" going back over several years.