Brief review on counterfeit medicine,,do we really affected by it?

Counterfeit medicine is fake medicine. It may be contaminated or contain the wrong or no active ingredient. They could have the right active ingredient but at the wrong dose. Counterfeit drugs are illegal and may be harmful to your health.

Have the tablets changed in appearance? Did you find another supplier on your regularly used tablet, such as buying your medications over the internet or in Mexico? It is possible you have obtained a counterfeit product. 

Last year, thousands of bottles of counterfeit Lipitor were embargoed at the San Francisco Airport as they entered the country. When investigated, the tablets contained nothing more than yellow road paint and talc!.


This is brief video about fake medicines:

FDA takes all reports of suspect counterfeits seriously and, in order to combat counterfeit medicines, is working with other agencies and the private sector to help protect the nation's drug supply from the threat of counterfeits.

Counterfeit prescription drugs may be made up with cheaper - sometimes even dangerous - ingredients such as highway paint, floor wax, and boric acid.

Negative effects of counterfeit medications:

(1)             Economic impact:

Like many counterfeiters--- a 2005 report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated that the fake-medicine trade is worth $200 billion (£130 billion), two cents in every dollar of global exports.

Fraudulent and substandard antimalarial drugs could be wrecking the chances of winning the war against malaria in Africa, researchers from the Wellcome Trust-Mahosot Hospital-Oxford University Tropical Medicine Research Collaboration reported in the Malaria Journal.

(2)            Impact on quality of life:

Asia is seeing an "epidemic of counterfeits" of life-saving drugs, experts say, and the problem is spreading. Malaria medicines have been particularly hard hit; in a recent sampling in Southeast Asia, 53 percent of the anti-malarials bought were fakes.

In September 2011, the Nigerian authorities found $25,000 worth of counterfeit malaria and blood pressure drugs concealed in a shipment of purses from China.

Estimates of the deaths caused by fakes run from tens of thousands a year to 200,000 or more. The World Health Organization has estimated that a fifth of the one million annual deaths from malaria would be prevented if all medicines for it were genuine and taken properly.

(3)            Fake medications

Ex: Bogus antibiotics, tuberculosis drugs, AIDS drugs and even meningitis vaccines and Malaria drugs.

Viagra, the painkiller Oxycontin and sleeping pills. Investigators have, however, found fake statins, which could eventually lead to a heart attack, and fake Tamiflu, which could be fatal in a pandemic of lethal flu.

(4)            Drug-resistance:

Even though patients received right medication after sometime by that time they would have develop resistant strains fostered by fake medications.

Prime target of counterfeiters at the moment: Artemisinin, newest drug for malaria treatment. Some had acetaminophen, which can temporarily lower malarial fevers but does not kill parasites. Some had chloroquine, an old and now nearly useless anti-malarial.

China is the source of most of the world's fake drugs, experts say.

Why they can’t stop it?

• ·         "The problem is simply so massive that no amount of enforcement is going to stop it.
• ·         80 percent of the world's nations, pharmacology expert’s estimate, lack drug agencies capable of detecting sophisticated counterfeits.

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