Counterfeit Medicines

by Omar Kamal

From scarcity of basic medicines to unaffordable prices, millions of people have limited or even no access to essential medicines. In such conditions, a new business has developed; it is the business of counterfeit medicines!!! , We usually used to hear about counterfeiting of computer programs but FAKE DRUGS …. That's a big crisis.

Counterfeit medicines include medicines with lower quality and effectiveness or ineffective at all. In the worst cases, they may include highly toxic substances. In some countries that is rare to happen but in many it is an everyday reality.

Any of us can come across medicines that are packed in the right way and looks good but it does not contain the correct ingredients. Occasionally, there can be a High Quality fake that do contain the appropriate active ingredient. At any case the contents of those fake drugs are unreliable and of unknown source. Any kind of drugs can be counterfeited ranging from expensive anti cancers, antibiotics and drugs for hypertension to inexpensive pain killers. In developing countries the market needs direct the counterfeiting to drugs used in treatment of malaria, TB and AIDS. Advanced printing technology made it difficult to differentiate between fake and real ones by naked eye.

Counterfeit drugs have been firstly reported more than 10 years ago but since 2005 it has witnessed a huge increase and it is expected that the fake drug sales will reach 75 billion dollar by 2010. Although detailed information about the amount of fake drugs in the market is difficult to have but it is estimated to represent 1% of the market value in the developed countries and up to 30% in developing ones. Internet based sales of medicines are counterfeit in 50% of cases.

The majority of production of counterfeit drugs takes place in houses and backyards. It makes very high profits due to high demands for medicines and low production costs. Also in some countries, counterfeit drugs are not only sold but may be exported!!!!

Weak drug regulations may also lead to appearance of low quality drugs from official pharmaceutical companies approved by the governments. I do not know if they do not know about those drugs or just accept a lower quality for a cheaper price! In my university, they analyzed 10 tablets from the same pack of a common used drug which is approved and sold in the local market to see the percent of the active ingredient in each…. And what a surprise, the percent varied from a tablet to another and all of them were under the supposed stated level!!!!! 

In my opinion, counterfeit drugs will be on of the biggest challenges for global health, as we can spot if an area does not have access to essential medicines but it is so difficult to know about the areas having fake access. Solutions MAY include the use of high technology to assure the reliability and the source of the drugs besides having strict drug regulations & effective monitoring systems. Surly, that will lead to more increase in the costs of production to assure quality and in turn the victims will be the developing countries in which people can't afford even half of the current prices. Beside the fact that in many areas in the developing world, governments are neither dominating nor represented so you can imagine about the possibility to apply any regulations on the drug market (if present).