Re: Attn: Dr.Smita Extent of Spurious Medicines in India

[Guest guest]

Dear Dr. Smita:

Thanks for your valuable information on counterfeit medicines worldwide. For a greater outlook of the problem in the context of our country, please do read my today's post giving a compilation of various estimates regarding the extent of this menace in India.. Please keep posting.

With regards

Dr. Geer M. Ishaq

Sr. Lecturer

Dept. of Pharmaceutical Sciences

University of Kashmir

Srinagar-190006 (J & K)

Ph: 9419970971, 9906673100

E-mail: ishaq@...

Website: http://ishaqgeer.googlepages.com

Re: Extent of Spurious Medicines in India

Hello Dr. Geer,

You have chosen the right debut topic as a moderator. It is related to rationality, humanity on one side while also depicts the greedy and fake mentality of mankind on other side. Below given statistics gives just the glimpse of problem `Counterfeit medicines' which is related to drug resistance, drug toxicity, wastage of physicians efforts, torture to the patients increasing their physical, mental and economical sufferings and much more.

1. Approximately one-third to one-half of packets of artesunate tablets, the pivotal, life-saving anti-malarial drug, recently bought in Southeast Asia were fakes, containing no active ingredient at all. A nongovernmental organization in a Southeast Asian country bought 100,000 inexpensive "artesunate" tablets only to find that they were counterfeit.

2. A total of 192,000 Chinese patients are reported to have died in 2001 from fake drugs, and in the same year Chinese authorities "closed 1,300 factories while investigating 480,000 cases of counterfeit drugs worth 57 million USD". In 2004, Chinese authorities arrested 22 manufacturers of grossly substandard infant milk powder and closed three factories after the death of over 50 infants.

3. In North America , counterfeit atorvastatin, erythropoietin, growth hormone, filgrastim, gemcitabine, and paclitaxel have been reported recently.

4. Nigeria recently threatened to ban the import of all drugs from India, a major supplier, because of the high prevalence of counterfeits amongst the imports.

5. In Haiti , Nigeria , Bangladesh , India , and Argentina , more than 500 patients, predominantly children, are known to have died from the use of the toxin diethylene glycol in the manufacture of fake paracetamol syrup.

6. During the 1995 meningitis epidemic in Niger , the authorities received a donation of 88,000 Pasteur Merieux and Kline Beecham vaccines from neighbouring Nigeria . The drugs were found to be counterfeit, with no traces of active product. Some 60,000 people were inoculated with the fake vaccines.

7. The recent discovery of counterfeit antiretrovirals (stavudine-lamivudi nenevirapine and lamivudine-zidovudi ne) in central Africa raises the prospect of a disastrous setback in the treatment of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa , unless vigorous action is taken now.

PLoS Medicine | www.plosmedicine. org April 2005 | Volume 2 | Issue 4 | e100

This issue is almost 3 years old but still the scenario is not much different. It is surveyed that India is at the top in manufacturing and exporting counterfeit medicines.

Regards,

Dr. Smita Mali

GMC, Nagpur .

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