Sellers of the 'cure-all' balm shamelessly prey on the pensions of Vitebsk elderly

It is said that health cannot be bought with money. However, when you read the advertising leaflet for the Tibetan balm "100 Gifts," produced by the company "Apiphytogroup" from the Perm Krai of the Russian Federation, you begin to doubt the validity of a very old truth. If you believe the advertising leaflet, the balm cures literally all diseases, including the most formidable ones: stroke, angina, diabetes mellitus, glaucoma, bronchial asthma... It restores speech and gets paralyzed people back on their feet, and easily dissolves nodules in the thyroid gland. "From a desperate disabled woman after a stroke, her daughter turned into an attractive lady radiant with beauty and health," this is just one of many confessional stories printed in the advertising booklet. Diligent distributors regularly fill our mailboxes with this waste paper from an unknown publisher (no publication data is provided). With the same frequency, itinerant peddlers come to Vitebsk and other cities of the region and sell to eager buyers, elderly people, significantly lightening their wallets. After all, one 100-milliliter bottle of the remedy costs 150 thousand rubles. And this is taking into account the 20 thousand discount provided to pensioners!

And it turns out that people believe all this, as they form long queues at so-called sales exhibitions, which usually last only an hour in one place. And they buy more than one bottle, because the doctrine of using this product (the balm is not a medicine, as there is a warning in the advertisement) is based on long-term, even infinite use. So that the source of income for enterprising dealers never dries up.

But what is the balm "100 Gifts" really? Specialists from the Vitebsk regional inspection of Gosstandart and the center for hygiene, epidemiology, and public health tried to find the answer to this question and went to one of these fairs. The seller acted on behalf of an entrepreneur from Minsk. Upon seeing the unwelcome visitors, he became nervous, but presented a declaration of conformity of the honey-plant mixture being sold to the requirements of two technical regulations of the EAEU. It is registered with one of the product and service certification bodies in the city of Perm. The document states that the mixture "100 Gifts" is a food product of plant origin. However, the specialists conducting the monitoring doubted its classification as a food product, since the consumer packaging label indicates that its composition includes milk thistle and sea buckthorn oil, shungite water, rowan extract, propolis, burdock, St. John's wort herb, elecampane roots, cedar resin, bear fat and bile, beaver musk extract, and sorbic acid. "But these ingredients are not food products," asserts Oksana Murashkevich, head of the Gosstandart inspection. "Moreover, bile is a special raw material intended for the production of medicinal drugs, which is not allowed for consumption. Such a declaration cannot be trusted!" Plus, the seller lacked quality

manufacturer's certificate, which is a violation of Article 11 of the Law of the Republic of Belarus "On the Quality and Safety of Food Raw Materials and Food Products for Human Life and Health".

During the sale of

"Miracle"-balsam, inspectors also found non-compliance with the requirements of the Law "On Advertising". Customers were given advertising information that the mixture is used for the treatment of various types of diseases. It lists indications for the use of the product (depending on the type of disease), as well as the method of administration and dosage, while the consumer packaging simply states: for direct consumption. At the same time, the balsam "100 Gifts" is not registered in the Unified Register of State Registration Certificates not only as a medicinal product, but even as a dietary supplement, which means it cannot be positioned as a product intended for the treatment of diseases indicated in the advertising. Not to mention that the entrepreneur did not coordinate the exhibition-fair in advance with the local authorities, as required by Resolution of the Council of Ministers No. 384 of April 23, 2012.

So why do elderly people, who are undoubtedly tormented by age-related ailments and often find no salvation, fall for such tricks? Is it possible with one

"medicine" to cure all diseases? It remains to be assumed that the well-known placebo phenomenon is at work. This is when the effect of a substance without obvious therapeutic properties, used as a medicine, is associated with the patient's own belief in the effectiveness of the drug. It is possible that for someone this actually creates an illusion of relief. But, it seems, it would be much more reasonable to spend these 600 thousand rubles or more on vegetables, fruits, and other healthy foods.

However, there have been many publications on this topic, but few real actions that could stop the shameless deception of the suffering. So is there no one to apply the brakes? The Ministry of Health is fighting self-medication by tightening the rules for dispensing medicines from pharmacies, but here everyone is their own Aesculapius - and nothing. The Ministry of Trade controls the compliance with the advertising law by everyone, but not by the distributors of the balm. Its booklet in the form of an A3 newspaper without any publication data and with an unknown circulation is freely distributed throughout the republic. Finally, refusals to provide premises to entrepreneurs selling the balm could become an obstacle, since landlords, without requiring them to obtain approval for holding an exhibition-fair from the local authorities, do not comply with the handover procedure.

Vera MURASHKINA,"Vitbichi"