Agenzia Fides, the missionary press agency of the Vatican, has spoken out against counterfeit drugs and the approximated 700,000 people expected to die annually due to their pervasiveness.

Fake tuberculosis and malaria drugs alone are estimated to kill 700,000 people a year. A large part of these victims are African. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that up to 30 percent of the medicines on sale in many African countries are counterfeit and have found that nearly half of the drugs sold in Angola, Burundi, and the Congo are substandard.

In 2003, Interpol, an international police organization, conducted a survey on the quality of drugs available in Lagos, sub-Saharan Africa's most populous city and found that 80 percent of the drugs available were fakes. In 2008, more than 80 children in Nigeria died after being given medicine for teething pain that was laced with antifreeze.

Fake medicines can be missing key ingredients, use the wrong ingredient, or have insufficient or too much of the active ingredient. In some cases, use of these medicines can increase drug resistance. When there is not enough of the active ingredient, the drug kills some of the parasites or viruses, but the pathogens that are not killed adapt. As time goes on, even if a patent was to be treated with the correct medication, he or she would not be cured.

Agenzia Fides states, “The development of germs resistant to antibiotics and other treatments is a problem that affects all humanity, not just Africans. It is therefore in the best interest of all concerned that smuggling of counterfeit drugs be fought against.”

The Samahan Laban sa Pekeng Gamot ("Samahan"), a group comprised of pharmaceutical companies, drug stores and health professionals, counters the Philippines’ Department of Health’s claim that counterfeit drugs account for only 10 percent of the market, saying that the actual figure is closer to 30 percent, according to Malaya Business Insight.

Samahan also urged consumers to buy prescription medications from only legitimate sources, like pharmacies, hospitals, doctors and approved websites.

The advocacy group also criticized the government’s handling of the 16,300 Botika ng Barangay (village drugstores) outlets it helped establish.

Samahan said that these shops were initially stocked with drugs by the Department of Health and were supposed to replenish their supplies through a monitored procurement process. However, some of the stories have turned to the cheapest suppliers, and sometimes, as a consequence, are buying and reselling counterfeit drugs.

Samahan isn’t the only entity that recognizes that the country must do a better job of handling counterfeit drugs.

"There’s a tremendous room for improvement," Scott A. Davis, regional senior director for global security for Asia-Pacific of Pfizer, told the news source.

The Free Press confirmed online pharmacy pioneer Andrew Strempler's business, PharmaCheck, started operating in a free-trade zone in Curacao in August 2006 -- the same month the U.S. Food and Drug Administration first warned consumers prescription drugs from Strempler's Manitoba-based online pharmacy, RxNorth, were unsafe.

26 February 2010

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Merhi told a local television station that the suspect in the matter had been under surveillance for a period of time, before the raids took place.

26 February 2010

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The department issued a statement in which it said the factory was operating illegally, without the knowledge of the Health Ministry and contained “large amounts of counterfeit drugs of uncertain quality” which were being trafficked.

25 February 2010

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After a lengthy undercover investigation, officers of the Financial Intelligence Unit searched homes, offices and businesses throughout the country.

24 February 2010

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Andrew Strempler, founder of the Minnedosa, Man.-based Mediplan Prescription Plus Pharmacy, agreed to strike his name from the provincial pharmacist registry at a discipline hearing last October.

24 February 2010

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Andrew Strempler, founder of the Minnedosa, Man.-based Mediplan Prescription Plus Pharmacy, agreed to strike his name from the provincial pharmacist registry at a discipline hearing last October.

24 February 2010

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MSU formally started an Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection program this month, though it has been operating on a smaller scale since June 2009. In that time, about 100 corporate executives have been trained in strategies to combat counterfeiting.

18 February 2010

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A division bench comprising Justice Amar Saran and Justice S S Tiwari observed as no conscious and systematic effort was being made to check proliferation of spurious drugs in UP, the Centre and the state government should clearly indicate as to how, apart from bringing about amendments to the law, they plan to take effective action for controlling the menace.

18 February 2010

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