Fake and poor-quality drugs are killing hundreds of thousands of people in developing nations, creating a new pandemic, scientists say.
A series of 17 articles published Monday in several medical journals brought clarity to the problem of counterfeit and substandard drugs in several developing nations.
One article discovered that in 2013 more than 120,000 African children died due to fake or shoddy malaria drugs, according to a release from the National Institutes of Health.
Scientists in another article tested nearly 17,000 antibiotics and malaria and tuberculosis drug samples and found that 41 percent didn’t meet quality standards.
“The pandemic of falsified and substandard medicines is pervasive and underestimated, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where drug regulatory systems are weak or nonexistent,” said Joel Breman, an NIH senior scientist and author of the article.
International agencies are implementing new technology to help fight the problem. For instance, some countries have turned to fluorescent lighting to look for clues that a bottle or packaging is counterfeit.
However, it could be difficult to use those tools in remote, rural settings, according to the authors of another article.
The problem of counterfeit or poor-quality drugs isn’t just isolated in the developing world. In late 2013, a law was passed to help drug makers and distributors root out counterfeit products through electronic tracking.
The Food and Drug Administration just alerted doctors last week to watch out for counterfeit botox.
