With the multi-billion dollar fake drugs industry now having set its sights deliberately on making further inroads into the churning out of brands associated with children’s illnesses, medical experts and reputable international organizations are becoming increasingly concerned that poor countries where environmental conditions render children more vulnerable to diseases may have little if any real defence against ‘cures’ that could exacerbate rather than ease their child welfare headaches.
A study of the phenomenon of fake drugs that became public in March revealed, for example, that fake anti-malarial drugs may be responsible for the deaths of more than 150,000 children across the world and notably in poor countries every year. It is a microcosm of a wider and worsening problem of falsified and substandard medical products according to the co-authors of a report published last month in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Whereas just over ten years ago an investigation by a subsidiary of the internationally known drugmakers named Pfizer Global Security working to counteract counterfeit drugs, identified 29 of its products in 75 countries as being falsified, just ten years the same investigators found 95 fakes in 113 countries.
