E-DRUG: Malaria - Counterfeit drugs and deadly dangers
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The following message is forwarded from HIFA (www.hifa.org)
Dear All,
We share courtesy of Malaria Journal this sad news about the damage that counterfeit malaria drugs is causing:
Counterfeit drugs: 'People are dying every day'
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37470667
Imagine seeing your child suffering from malaria,
one of the biggest killers of children across the
world. Symptoms include high fever, sweating, vomiting and convulsions.
But it's OK, you think, because you bought
medicine to combat the disease from a local drugs market.
Now imagine what it must be like to see your
child die nonetheless because the drugs you bought were fake.
That is the brutal reality of the multi-billion dollar a year global trade in counterfeit drugs.
More than 120,000 people a year die in Africa as a result of fake anti-malarial drugs alone, says the World Health Organization, either because the
drugs were substandard or simply contained no active ingredients at all.
Even medicines that are substandard - containing an insufficient dosage of active ingredients, say - can be deadly, leading to drug resistance, a particular issue for infectious diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.....
Joseph Ana
Joseph Ana is the Lead Consultant
and Trainer at the Africa Centre for Clinical
Governance Research and Patient Safety in
Calabar, Nigeria.
Posted by
Neil Pakenham-Walsh, UK
<neil.pakenham-walsh@ghi-net.org>