Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiDrug Giants Accused of Ignoring Fake Medicines that Kill Millions
The world's major drug companies have been accused of turning a blind eye to the multibillion-dollar trade in fake medicine that has resulted in an explosion of child malaria deaths in developing countries.
Governments have not tackled the problem and pharmaceutical companies are burying the issue, afraid that any publicity given to their medicines being faked will lead to a fall in the sale of the genuine product, according to a documentary.
The problem has been particularly acute with the treatment of malaria in Africa, with anti-malaria drugs faked on an industrial scale. Professor Nick White, of Oxford University, one of the world's leading experts on malaria, said: "We estimate that there are more than one million deaths each year - which is the equivalent of seven jumbo jets going down every day. And 90 per cent of those deaths are in children."
Professor White said that counterfeit medicine was a major reason why malaria had become, over the past 30 years, Africa's biggest child killer, from an illness that used to be easily treated with medicines.
Some of the fake drugs contain no medicine at all, but others have tiny traces of the real ingredients - which leads to another, potentially bigger problem: it allows the malaria parasite to build up resistance to the drug.
Nigeria's campaigning drugs regulator, Dora Akunyili, described counterfeiting as "mass murder". She told the documentary, which will be aired today on The Business Channel, a satellite station: "The fake drug racket and the silence associated with it have led to the resurgence of malaria... The companies kept quiet. The regulators were paid off and everybody was helpless. Drug counterfeiters operated in this country and in most developing countries for almost three decades, unchallenged."
There is now just one family of drugs left that malaria has not built up resistance to, Artemisinins - which are also being faked. Professor White said: "Resistance to the Artemisinins would be an absolute catastrophe for our current attempts to try to control malaria."
It is estimated that the global fake drug racket is worth $40bn (£20bn) a year, and between 50 and 90 per cent of medicine in some African and Asian countries is counterfeit. Graham Satchwell, the former head of security at GlaxoSmithKline, the British-based global pharmaceutical giant, told The Independent: "Each therapy area is highly competitive, so if one person's drug is undermined, their market share will suffer. It takes a brave company to say they have a problem."
Mr Satchwell said that the "majority of the industry are sitting on their hands", rather than tackling the problem - for instance through radio tracking of their products. He also pointed out that the figures from the industry's own organisation, the Pharmaceutical Security Institute, showed many cases of counterfeiting in the US, but hardly any in China or Africa - despite firm evidence from other sources that tens of thousands die each year in China and Africa as a result of fake medicines each year.
Dr Akunyili said: "If the companies had risen up to their responsibilities early enough, the issue of the preponderance of fake drugs would not have gotten to the level it got in Nigeria. It is this silence that is actually largely encouraging drug counterfeiting"
Dr Martin Meremikwu, of Calabar University Hospital, in southern Nigeria, said that he had seen child malaria deaths soar. He said that, by the time children who had been treated with fake drugs got to the hospitals, it was often too late to save them.
"Malaria should not kill people. It's a curable disease. But if the patient uses the wrong drug - either because they are fake or they are ineffective because of higher resistance - then they are lying here with complications.
"And in children, young children, the time between a mild disease and a severe disease can be as little as eight hours, or 24 hours or 12 hours. So time is of the huge essence here. You really cannot afford to try some other drug before trying a good one. You can't. Because you don't have that time."
The drugs don't work
Counterfeit medicines are swamping unregulated markets in developing nations with unknown and sometimes fatal results. Not only are thousands dying needlessly, but patients are also becoming immune to the effects of the real thing. Counterfeit drugs occasionally contain small doses of the active ingredient - enough to induce resistance
The UN World Health Organisation estimates the incidence of counterfeit medicines is about 10 per cent in developing countries, with prevalence higher where regulatory control is weakest. But in many parts of Africa, according to the WHO, as well as in some countries in Latin America and South Asia, prevalence sits at around 30 per cent. The patients hit are the sickest and the poorest.
WHO estimates that 200,000 of the one million malaria deaths every year would be prevented if all the drugs taken were genuine. The popularity of combination malaria drugs - which are more expensive than other treatments - has seen counterfeit peddlers cash in on the opportunity to boost sales. In Cambodia, Tanzania and Cameroon, up to 90 per cent of such drugs on sale in local markets are believed to contain nothing but chalk or maize flour.
As recently as 2001, about 68 per cent of medicines in circulation in Nigeria were unregistered, and as much as 41 per cent were believed to be fake.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
14 Comments so far
Show AllA counterfeit medication or a counterfeit drug is a medication or pharmaceutical product which is produced and sold with the intent to deceptively represent its origin, authenticity or effectiveness. Generic drug products or drug products whose only violation is that of trademark laws are not counterfeit drug products. A counterfeit drug may contain inappropriate quantities of active ingredients, may be improperly processed within the body (e.g., absorption by the body), or may contain ingredients that are not on the label (which may or may not be harmful), and is often sold with inaccurate, incorrect, or fake packaging. Medicines which are deliberately mislabeled in order to deceive consumers are therefore counterfeit. A drug which has not received regulatory approval is not a counterfeit. Counterfeit drugs are also related to Pharma Fraud.
online drugs
matt thomas, my apologies for speking too soon about which government to write and you didn't call the article a piece of shit. But I still stand by my believe that if the drug campanies made their drugs affordable in the countries they are needed, then the cause for countefeiting would be gone,
matt thomas. "The world's major drug companies have been accused of turning a blind eye to the multibillion-dollar trade in fake medicine that has resulted in an explosion of child malaria deaths in developing countries.
Governments have not tackled the problem and pharmaceutical companies are burying the issue afraid that any publicity given to their medicines being faked will lead to a fall in the sale of the genuine product, according to a documentary."
This is a quote from the article you described as a piece of shit. Well, the above quote from the article makes it very clear that the Pharmaceutical Industry should be blamed for not helping solve this problem. And perhaps another reason people want to blame the Pharmaceutical companies is because they are only concerned with profits. Maybe you've never had to sit and watch a child die from dengue fever because it was too expensive for the mother or father to buy the amount of medicine needed.
Again, as the quote makes clear, the drug company's only concern is their image, not any human life.
As to turning to the government to enforce that counterfeiting doesn't happen, which government are you recommending? Rwanda? Zimbabwe? India? The article says "Governments," not the US government.
And one last thing: if the drug companies would be a little less greedy, there would be less need to counterfeit drugs. If they were affordable in the country where they are needed, then the incentive is gone to sell counterfeit drugs.
I hate to rain on parade here but this article is crap.
For as much as I don't like Multi National Corporations - playing a blame game against them for this problem is wrong. Everyone would be better off to make an international plea to have goverments go after drug counterfitters.
We'd all be better off if we look at the nutritional and overpopulation/taxation of the land that lead to these illnesses
Ruth,
Thanks for the link. I will send in my comments. I'm happy that you have found what works for you. It would be nice if the FDA worked for us again. In fact, the complete health care system is broke. Well meaning doctors don't even have the time anymore to accurately diagnose a patient. And I have a feeling the number of doctors willing to push certain drugs for big Phama is rising. Whoever "they" are, want to take away our personal freedoms in all areas of this modern life. And nothing gets more personal than your ability to decide what to do with your body.
The Organic Consumer's Association is based in my home state (Minnesota) and have done some excellent advocacy.
Herbal remedies are a threat to the corporate stamping agencies like the FDA. Are they going to make it illegal to grow garlic or St. John's Wort? Send out the DEA to burn all naturally growing herbs? They may want to, but it's an example of an unenforceable law, taken to the stratosphere.
I've recently discovered tea tree oil, and it's worked for me when over-the-counter topical antibiotics have failed. Of course big pharm wants to eliminate that. It's evident of a broader governmental break down, people need to form their own organizations to provide leadership because the government is failing.
So the bright side is that the declining relevance of the FDA in genuinely looking out for consumers must automatically cause a rise in ground-up efforts elsewhere.
Ruth,
Thanks for the link! I submitted my comment to the FDA to oppose this draft regulation. EVERYONE here should do the same thing. And get everyone you know to file a comment to the FDA as well.
Thanks
To: hybridoma2001
... At any rate, traditional, herbal medicines need to be given a fair chance at becoming qualified by the FDA, for example. They've been around for thousands of years and there must be some reason for that.
Finally, in Western cultures, we are bombarded with drugs for everything ...
In response to this, the FDA is at it again. They want to regulate herbs, supplements, and vitamins. They refer to them as "untested drugs". They also want to disallow alternative medicines. As you have pointed out, many supplements have been in use far longer than drugs and with far fewer side effects.
Please check
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4803.cfm
and write your comments. The FDA is accepting comments until April 30.
For myself, I am outraged by this. I react badly to antibiotics. Conventional medicine cannot accept this. At 71, I now eat organic, use supplements carefully and am in very good health.
I do not want my freedom to maintain my health to be taken away from me. The idea of becoming a "factory-farm animal" that exists to benefit the profits of the drug industry is terrifying.
I do believe in preventive care but how can you expect preventive care to cure people of malaria, tb , small pox and such. I have not found anything that will work.
Also you are imposing this upon people who have defective immunity because they do not even have clean water.
Whoever is marketing and making the counterfit drugs should be tried as the murderers they are.
Insurance companies are also murderers because they deny care unless you can afford it.
It is time to hold the real criminals accountible. Only then can we become a civilized society who care about each other.
Here in Vietnam, people will rarely take medicine. If they have a headache, they apply pressure to an area on the forehead between the eyes, and the headache is gone. Also, many people still prefer to use herbal medicines rather than medicine produced by a drug manufacturer.
While I think that all medicines should be considered objectively, Chinese medicine has only recently begun to be more accepted in Western medicine.
The one thing that bothers me about Chinese medicine is that so many of the "Uneccessary" medicines like: sexual stimulants, obtaining more "power" or the like, often contain the parts of endangered species in them. So poor people kill these rare animals to sell to those who make the medicine.
At any rate, traditional, herbal medicines need to be given a fair chance at becoming qualified by the FDA, for example. They've been around for thousands of years and there must be some reason for that.
Finally, in Western cultures, we are bombarded with drugs for everything that one could possibly imagine. In general, we take far to much medicine in the West. Especially when we get sick. It's good that we can take something to relieve the symptoms. But far too many people take ant-biotics and flu shots.
I think we are meant to get sick from time to time. This gives our body some pactice at both defending itself and producing anti-bodies.
But the young and the old need more help and this is where the major drug companies are at their worst. If there is no money to be made by poducing a cure for malaria, then they simply won't fund any research. Malaria could have been brought under control decades ago but, as written above: if it doesn't make a hefty profit, it won't be made. Who cares about small children dying in Afica from a totally treatable disease?
The current American ethic is: "doesn't matter what it does, as long as it makes money."
Trying to find an occupation that first, does no harm, makes me sometimes feel like an ant on Jupiter.
Check out Jennifer Washburn's "University, Inc." (2005). Apparently it's not unusual for drug companies to headhunt for M.D.'s at the universities, get their P.R. people to ghost-write a review their own product, and pay some professor to stamp his name on it.
Now maybe I'm being jaded here... But does anyone else notice, also, that the FDA doesn't seem to evaluate natural, traditional or herbal remedies? Seems to mainly be about rubber-stamping big pharm.
What's sad is that there's no objectivity left, in an environment wherein which science is co-opted, to separate snake oil from the real McCoy.
As long as we have health care for profit profit will always be more important than care. We need national health care.
mustbefree, we are guilty.
Is this another case of the haves doing to the have nots what they want to do? Is it just pure greed where they save money with cheap substitutes? Who is culpable? CEO's, workers, stockholders, we the people as a whole who tolerate this kind of racial murder? Why do I feel guilty? Tony