Britons are increasingly at risk of being sold unsafe drugs over the internet because of the growth in unlicensed online pharmacies, a report suggests.

Almost a fifth of all online pharmacies are based in Britain, and only a tiny fraction are certified by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the pharmacies’ regulator.

Health industry officials said that the increasing popularity of the internet as a place to buy drugs meant that patients were putting themselves at risk because many sites did not require that they presented a prescription issued by a doctor.

MarkMonitor, the internet security company that compiled the report, said that of the 3,160 internet-based pharmacies that it examined, 506 – or 16 per cent – were hosted on servers in Britain, making the country the second-most popular place to run an internet pharmacy after the US. Charlie Abrahams, the chief executive of MarkMonitor, said: “The vast majority of online sites are operating without the proper credentials from the pharmacy regulatory bodies. Our findings also indicate that some of the drugs being sold on these sites may be fake, expired, diluted or alternatives, and that visitors to these sites are likely to compromise their credit-card identities, as well as their health.”

A spokeswoman for the the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said that it did not believe that the situation was as bad as the report portrayed. But she said that consumers should not buy medicines over the internet, and that those who did could expect “at the very least to be ripped off, and at worst to have serious side-effects to drugs that have completely bypassed the legitimate licensing process”.

Last year a 64-year-old woman in Sunderland developed cataracts and needed to have surgery after she bought a drug to treat a self-diagnosed case of chronic fatigue syndrome from an online pharmacy in Thailand.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB), with which all retail pharmacies must register, admitted that some medicines were “readily available from online suppliers who have no professional qualifications or healthcare expertise”. Under a scheme to be implemented next year, no pharmacy will be allowed to operate solely on the internet, and those that sell drugs online will be required to display an RPSGB logo. The Medicines Act allows a brief communication with a doctor online to be regarded as a consultation for the purposes of prescription.

On average, unregistered internet pharmacies were selling the most popular drugs, including the antiimpotence therapy Viagra and the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, at a fifth of the price that they would sell for in registered pharmacies, prompting fears that they were unsafe or counterfeit versions. “Online pharmacies are the main route for fake and illegal medicines to get to patients in the UK, and as such are very dangerous,” Martin Worrall, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said.

Several internet pharmacies that did not display the RPSGB logo did not respond to requests for comment.

Unhealthy treatment

50: percentage of online pharmacies that have “inadequate information” for customer protection

10: percentage of pharmacies that advertised drugs with “no prescription required”

100: number of UK-based sites being investigated by the MHRA

80: average percentage discount for branded drugs from an unregistered pharmacy

£205: annual spend per head on drugs by the NHS

Source: MarkMonitor, MHRA, ABPI

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