Fake Ozempic and Mounjaro: what Panama's MINSA flagged

More demand than supply

In 2023, the use of semaglutide for weight loss drove up demand and even caused shortages¹². On October 31 that year, the National Directorate of Pharmacy and Drugs (DNFD) at Panama's Ministry of Health (MINSA) warned of a side effect: the shortage "appears to be exploited by criminal organizations to place counterfeit Ozempic on the market"¹.

Eight days later the DNFD updated the alert with nine incidents reported to the WHO in eight countries. The imbalance between demand and supply, it said, had "probably favored" the spread of counterfeit product "through different commercial channels, including unauthorized sale over the internet"². The same notice pointed out that Panama had only two sanitary registrations for Ozempic (110266 and 110267)².

What the fake pens contained

The most alarming case came from Europe: German-presentation pens that, according to Austria's BASG as cited by MINSA, contained insulin instead of semaglutide and were associated with severe hypoglycemia and seizures in Austria; they had not been bought from authorized pharmacies but directly from an independent physician¹². The notice described giveaways such as a needle labeled 31G (the original is 32G) and a dose ring that extends¹. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) had reported in October 2023 that the fake pens, with German labels, were found at wholesalers in the European Union and the United Kingdom and carried genuine information from Ozempic packs, including batch numbers¹¹.

In June 2024 the WHO issued Medical Product Alert No. 2/2024: three falsified Ozempic batches found in Brazil (October 2023), the United Kingdom (October 2023) and the United States (December 2023), inside the regulated supply chain³. La Prensa covered the alert along with MINSA's advice not to buy Ozempic from unauthorized outlets such as the internet⁴. In the United States, the FDA had already reported in December 2023 that it seized thousands of units of counterfeit Ozempic from lot NAR0074, with needles that were also counterfeit and whose sterility could not be confirmed¹².

2026: Mounjaro's turn

Tirzepatide followed the same path. In August 2026 MINSA flagged counterfeit Mounjaro, lot D881474 (exp. 04/2027), based on a notice from Brazil's Anvisa and Eli Lilly do Brasil. The fake device carried a serial number that did not match the one registered on the original cartridge⁵. MINSA said the product is not registered in Panama and gave the 501-0306 line for reports⁵. Brazil knows the problem well: an analysis by Anvisa and the University of Brasília of GLP-1s in that country documented cases of counterfeit products and concluded that they reveal critical supply-chain vulnerabilities¹³.

Why is Panama a "vulnerable point"?

In September 2025, launching the campaign "Stop. Not everything that looks like health is", Health Minister Fernando Boyd Galindo said the country "is a vulnerable point for the entry of these illicit products"⁶. The DNFD had by then issued 56 counterfeit-medicine alerts for the region since 2024 and announced inspections with support from Customs⁷.

The reason is logistics. Presenting the latest TRACIT Illicit Trade Index report in July 2026, its director general, Jeffrey Hardy, described the Colón Free Zone as "a gateway for the distribution of illicit products throughout the region"; the report warns that criminal networks use it to hide, repackage and re-export goods, medicines included⁸. Customs director Soraya Valdivieso put medicines on the same list as tobacco, alcohol and fuel⁹.

The pattern: social media and WhatsApp

The alerts share a thread. In May 2024 the DNFD relayed an alert from Colombia's INVIMA about "semaglutide + vitamin B12" vials presented as compounded preparations, not registered in Panama, and warned that "many of these fraudulent products are sold on websites, social media and WhatsApp chains"¹⁰. What arrives through those channels has been tested: when researchers bought semaglutide without a prescription from illegal online pharmacies, the vials they received had a purity of 7.7% to 14.4% vs the 99% on the label and all contained endotoxin, and none of the Ozempic pens they ordered arrived¹⁴. Europe's EudraVigilance database gathered 234 safety reports linked to possibly counterfeit semaglutide; hypoglycemia was reported more often than with the genuine product¹⁵.

The message repeated in every notice is traceability: a verifiable sanitary registration, a lot number that matches the manufacturer's, and a known distribution chain²⁵. In a market where counterfeits reached even the regulated supply chain of three countries³, it is the debate that comes up most in Panama. The WHO summed it up in its December 2025 guideline on GLP-1s for obesity: global demand "has fueled the spread of falsified and substandard products"¹⁶.