Panama Customs Seizes Unregistered Sildenafil in San Felipe

What was reported in San Felipe

Panama's National Customs Authority (ANA), through its Directorate of Customs Prevention and Oversight with support from the National Police, raided a storage and distribution warehouse in the San Felipe district, home of the Casco Antiguo, in Panama City¹⁴. According to the agency's note, officers seized cigarettes worth about B/.18,000 and a bag with thousands of 50 mg sildenafil tablets, commercially known as Viagra, without sanitary registration¹.

No one was arrested: the warehouse was empty during the raid, and the goods were taken to Customs headquarters for legal procedures and to identify those responsible¹³. The seizure took place within the “Navidad sin Contrabando” (Christmas Without Contraband) operation that Customs runs every year from November 1²³. Sources dated it differently (ANA's note is from November 2, Crítica published on the 6th and Infobae on the 7th-8th), so this article places it only “in early November.”

What Customs did not say

ANA's note does not give the exact number of tablets, their origin or their value, and it cites neither the law applied nor a penalty¹. Infobae also notes that the agency did not specify these details⁴. Readers looking for precise figures will not find them in the public sources reviewed, and this article does not invent them. The essentials are clear: a product without sanitary registration, in a distribution warehouse, with no responsible party identified so far.

What “unregistered” means for the physician

Without registration, the product never went through verification with the regulator that it meets quality, safety and efficacy requirements; for a medicine of unknown origin, active ingredient concentration, manufacturing conditions and absence of contaminants cannot be guaranteed⁴. WHO defines falsified products as those that “deliberately misrepresent their identity, composition or source,” and estimates that at least 1 in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries is substandard or falsified¹¹.

For phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors (PDE-5i), a urology review describes how illicit products can contain contaminants and inaccurate amounts of the active ingredient, without appropriate warnings¹². Other reviews address the problem in adulterated supplements and in the counterfeit sexual-medicine market¹⁴¹⁵, and published analytical methods can tell counterfeit tablets from genuine ones¹⁶.

• Nitrate interaction: PDE-5i are contraindicated in patients taking organic nitrates, because synergistic vasodilation can enhance hypotension¹³. Infobae warns it can cause a dangerous drop in blood pressure⁴.
• Recognizable adverse events: Infobae lists headache, dizziness, visual changes and prolonged erections needing urgent care⁴. In 2019, Minsa's then director of Pharmacies and Drugs, Elvia Lau, cited priapism⁶.
• Comorbidities nobody screens: bypassing the formal system also leaves associated conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, unevaluated¹².

The history: sildenafil on Panama's radar for years

In November 2014, Minsa and the Intellectual Property Prosecutor's Office had an open case over a shipment of 40,000 sildenafil tablets, with a Colombian national detained⁸. In March 2016, La Prensa reported that Customs seized nearly $4 million in counterfeit medicines between January and March, and wrote that “sildenafil, whose brand name is Viagra, is the most counterfeited medicine so far this year”⁷.

In July 2019, Minsa and Customs seized about 18,000 tablets and 4,000 gel units of sildenafil from India in cargo at Tocumen, with a 2015 expiration date⁵. (Infobae, recalling that case, mentions 8,000 gel units; this article follows the figure in the contemporaneous report⁴⁵.) A nuance Lau explained to TVN: those products had once been registered in Panama, but the registration had expired in 2015⁶. In 2022, citing Minsa Pharmacies and Drugs data, La Estrella de Panamá listed sildenafil among the most counterfeited medicines, alongside ampicillin and amoxicillin⁹.

What the state does now and how to report

On September 1, 2026, Minsa, through the National Directorate of Pharmacy and Drugs (DNFD), launched the campaign “¡Cuidado! Un medicamento falsificado puede costarte la Vida,” with an online complaints portal and an alliance with Customs, the Public Prosecutor's Office, the Ministry of Public Security and the University of Panama¹⁰. Minister Fernando Boyd Galindo said that “the falsification of medicines represents a threat to citizens' lives”¹⁰.

Customs lists the email denuncias@ana.gob.pa and the 311 line for reports³⁴. For suspected unregistered products, the health channel is the DNFD complaints portal¹⁰. Customs also recommends keeping receipts: without proof of origin, goods can be preventively held³.

The same standard for every product

This news is a mirror: the question “does it have sanitary registration and traceability?” is not exclusive to one drug. It is the question a physician should ask of anything that reaches the practice, from an antibiotic to a peptide. To see how the standard applies, read what article 358 says about importing without registration, the counterfeit Ozempic and Mounjaro alert, the sanitary registration double standard in aesthetics and how to verify a COA and a lot. This text is informational and does not recommend using any product.