THE THIRD World was undoubtedly getting a raw deal from the international pharmaceutical companies. These firms had insisted on charging full price for their drugs for diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV, which are such a threat, particularly in Africa. The legal victory of the South African government over the pharmaceutical big battalions, forcing them to allow cheaper copycat drugs made, for instance by Indian companies, was therefore extremely welcome. But there has proven to be a downside to this deregulation of the medicines market. The door has been opened wide to fraudsters who sell counterfeit drugs with little or often none of key ingredients.
Research recently carried out by Oxford UK scientists has demonstrated the worrying extent of the problem. Investigators bought anti-malarial drugs at shops in Cambodian, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam. Of the 104 samples assembled, an astonishing 38 percent, had absolutely none of the key ingredient, artesunate, and were therefore completely useless. Similar studies have found substantial counterfeiting of tuberculosis drugs and a wide range of antibiotics, which had little or no active ingredients. There are also reports that fake HIV drugs are now being peddled in Africa.
There is no point beating about the bush over this scandal. The crime of which the evil people making and packaging and distributing these drugs are guilty, is murder. Researchers believe that thousands of sick people have died because they placed their faith in useless preparations. Their families wasted hard earned savings in an attempt to heal their loved ones and were sold useless pap. And there is worse. Antibiotics were once seen as the magic bullet to kill infections. But what was not properly realized in the early days was that malign organisms would rapidly build up a resistance to the antibiotic. This process is accelerated if antibiotics are overused or if individual treatments are not completed, or worse, if the drugs are fake with only a marginal antibiotic content. The tendency for people to go down to their druggists and buy antibiotics the moment they feel they might have a cold or flu coming on, is therefore a foolish one, even if the drugs they buy are actually genuine. But this alarming new research into counterfeit drugs suggests that a significant proportion of the “cheap” medicines on the Third World countries, is actually fake.
The international pharmaceutical companies can hardly conceal their glee at these revelations. They had trouble enough countering useless fakes when they dominated the drugs market. Now that other companies are being permitted to produce copycat versions of their own products for sale at markedly lower cost, the big pharmaceutical bosses see little mileage in continuing the fight. They are already being obliged to cede the intellectual copyright on drugs that they spent billions researching. They may therefore take the view that they can just sit back and wait for the chaos to reach a stage where the plum of a new global monopoly falls back in their laps.
That may indeed seem to be the most sensible business route but it is morally highly questionable. Surely there is another way; one which will help both the big players, as well as the rising indigenous drugs industries of countries like India and Brazil, while cutting out the criminals who are selling useless or dangerous preparations.
