Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals – Most Dangerous Unexamined Threat?

By: Ferdinand Sy


Currently, the H1N1 flu virus has been very busy grabbing headlines as the greatest threat to public health du jour. But does anyone even stopped to think for a moment that the largely unexamined and under-policed threat of counterfeit pharmaceuticals could become the greatest threat to our public health infrastructure, due to most of the world’s governments lackluster tackling of the issue? After all, if the drugs, vaccines, and other pharmaceuticals that we use to tackle our current public health threats – like the H1N1 flu pandemic - were both substandard and ineffective, would this be a recipe for disaster?

After seeing scores of BBC and CNN produced investigative reports on the shadowy world of counterfeit drug manufacturing, the salient theme that prevails in most of these features is that most governments only tackle the problem reactively. That is only when a lot of people – especially people with a lots of money – had died. As opposed to a proactive approach – i.e. catching counterfeit pharmaceutical manufacturers before their “toxic brew” takes scores of innocent lives.

Making a fast buck is probably the main driving force of the counterfeit pharmaceutical industry. Those very cheap fake drugs can even make some pharmaceutical retail shops criminal accomplices by their inability to resist the temptation of purchasing these ultra-cheap drugs of substandard quality. Some fake drugs don’t even contain the active ingredient at all, like antibiotic capsules that contain only powdered sugar.

Recent investigations of various law enforcement agencies around the world had found out that the counterfeit goods industry had become a very good way in recent years for various criminal organizations to launder their money. Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are not only dangerous to us it is also making criminal organizations – i.e. organized crime - harder to prosecute. If governments around the world continue to ignore this problem, or only act on it by whim, then the counterfeit pharmaceutical industry will be a much greater threat than a global flu pandemic.