Stop fake drugs

Updated on: Friday, October 30, 2009

Fake drugs are a stark reality today and the global fake drug industry is projected to be a $75 billion dollar industry by 2010.
About 50% of all drugs purchased over the Internet fail simple tests for active ingredients.
The allure of easy money seems to be pulling more and more people into the trade; even as the number of hapless victims from these fakes touched 1 million globally last year. The crux of the matter is that most of this tragedy is unfolding in the developing world. India and China are to be blamed for this.
“Counterfeit sales are increasing at nearly twice the rate of legitimate pharmaceutical sales” says Shashank Singh Rathore, a second-year MBA student at IIFT Kolkata who was elected from a highly qualified pool of international applicants to present his paper on “Fake Drug Industry and its impact on the Developing World" at the prestigious HPAIR 2009 Academic Conference at Seoul, South Korea.
Some of the statistics that he mentions in his paper are ghastly and disturbing: almost 40% of the medicines sold in Chinese cities are fakes and the death toll due to these fakes crossed 0.2 million in China alone. Each year, a large number (probably > 10,000) of people die from fake anti-malarial drugs in SE Asia, primarily India. The total number of fake drug manufacturing factories in China is estimated to be around 500, while this figure is put at 15,000 for India!

In his paper, Shashank proposes numerous ways of killing this cankerworm. He says the biggest change could be effected only if each participant in the distribution channel educates its staff on the issue and its grave consequences; and takes responsibility for adopting product-safety programmes. Shortening the distribution channel and strengthening laws will of course help. He also advises the public to purchase drugs only from registered pharmacy outlets and never to do so from a foreign website.

Stop fake drugs

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