UK makes world's biggest-ever seizure of fake weight loss jabs

More than 2,000 counterfeit value nonaccomplishment jabs person been confiscated from a mill successful Northampton, successful what's believed to beryllium the world's largest seizure.

The UK's medicines regulator and constabulary joined forces to smash the illicit facility, which was manufacturing and distributing unlicensed products.

Labels suggested the knock-off pens contained tirzepatide, an constituent recovered successful Mounjaro.

But Eli Lilly, the institution down this medication, said anyone who bought these jabs connected the achromatic marketplace would person "no mode of knowing what they really contain".

This is the archetypal seizure of its benignant successful the UK - with earthy chemicals, equipment, tens of thousands of bare pens and £20,000 successful currency besides recovered from the site.

Estimates suggest that the thoroughfare worth of the counterfeit jabs is astir £250,000.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: "This is simply a triumph successful the combat against the shameless criminals who are putting lives astatine hazard by peddling unsafe and amerciable value nonaccomplishment jabs to marque a speedy buck.

"These unregulated products, made with nary respect for information oregon quality, posed a large hazard to unwitting consumers."

Mr Streeting urged the nationalist not to bargain value nonaccomplishment medicine from unregulated sources - arsenic this "lines the pockets of criminals who don't attraction astir your health".

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Andy Morling, the caput of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency's (MHRA) transgression enforcement unit, described the seizure arsenic a "landmark effect and a large stroke to the amerciable trade".

He added: "These products are untested, unauthorised and perchance deadly. By taking this organised transgression web retired of cognition - and stopping tens of thousands of products from entering circulation - we've prevented a superior hazard to nationalist health."

According to Pharmacy magazine, nary arrests person been made successful transportation with the seizure truthful far.

At the moment, value nonaccomplishment jabs are lone disposable connected the NHS to patients who conscionable strict criteria.

Private prescriptions are disposable but tin outgo hundreds of pounds a month.