Keeping it real

We've all seen the fake designer gear on sale in holiday resorts: handbags, sunglasses, T-shirts. There's no doubt that they are copies, but they look just like the real thing – well, almost – at a fraction of the price. Until, that is, they start to fall apart – stitching comes undone, colours fade, and bits break off. With these items, it doesn't really matter; if you paid very little for them they are disposable, but what if that were to happen with dental equipment?

The counterfeiting trade in dental devices has been gathering momentum in recent years, mainly due to the growth in internet sales. In October 2014, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) reported that they had seized over 12,000 different pieces of poor quality dental equipment imported into the UK from China and Pakistan and sold on auction websites such as eBay, Amazon and Alibaba. These seizures included 24 X-ray machines that emitted high levels of radiation, nearly 400 potentially dangerous handpieces and more than 3,000 poor quality root canal files that could easily break in use.