There is an illegal market for any product of value; medicines and medical devices are no exceptions. There are several possibilities:

On the one hand, products can be withdrawn from the legal chain and resold via illegal distribution channels. As a result, drug bottlenecks can arise on the domestic medical market, for example. On the other hand, counterfeits of well-known products can be distributed through legal or illegal channels. Depending on the type of counterfeit, counterfeit drugs can pose a considerable health risk (read more). In addition, it is also important to keep the Austrian medical market free of illegal or non-legally compliant products. Thus, all drugs sold in Austria must have an Austrian or a central (= European) approval. If this is not the case, the respective product is illegally distributed in Austria. Furthermore, advertising monitoring plays a key role in protecting Austrian consumers from misleading or inadmissible advertising of medicinal products and the resulting misinformation and possibly incorrect medication/treatment.

The Enforcement Group of the Federal Office for Safety in Health Care mainly deals with illegalities in the medical market. In addition to combating and reporting violations of the law, prevention is one of the main tasks of enforcement.

In order to be able to carry out their work efficiently, the Enforcement team is dependent on information, including from the population. If you suspect illegal occurrences in connection with pharmaceutical products, medical devices or novel therapies, please report them here.

The primary objective of enforcement is to eliminate health hazards for the Austrian population by detecting and ending illegal activities on the basis of suspicious activity reports. However, particular attention is also paid to the prevention of illegal activities.