Chirac working to halt counterfeit drug trade in Africa

Antiobiotics. Dawn V. Gilmore (CC)

French ex-president Jacques Chirac has launched an international campaign to highlight and combat the worldwide proliferation of counterfeit drugs.

Recent figures from the World Health Organization’s anti-counterfeit medicines program (OMS) confirm that the counterfeit drug market activity accounts for around 10 percent, or $67 billion, of worldwide pharmaceutical product sales. That 10 percent is estimated to be responsible for the deaths of many thousands of people, particularly in African countries.

Those are the kinds of figures that Jacques Chirac is discussing with African political leaders on the first leg of a worldwide tour during which he aims to prod them into initiating policies to combat the problem, reported French daily l’Express.

Chirac is no novice in this field. His foundation, Fondation Chirac, was formed over a year ago and is committed to the fight against counterfeit drugs, as well as campaigning for worldwide clean water access and other issues.

“Of all the injustices possible, the most cruel is that which impacts heath” writes Chirac in the protocol of the “Cotonou Appeal Against Counterfeit Medicines.” The protocol was signed in Benin at the beginning of this week by several African countries.

Jacques Chirac. Photo © Eric Lefeuvre

“In certain cases 70 percent of available treatments are counterfeit,” Chirac told l’Express. “Profits made by criminal networks will soon be bigger than those of the international drug trade.”

Chirac’s foundation hopes that the Cotonou Appeal will inspire a Geneva Convention designed to rein in the counterfeit drug market.

A quick look at the facts reveals a dangerous and far-reaching problem. OMS’s Amor Toumi notes that counterfeit Viagra pills cost $0.05 to produce and that their profit margins range from 6 to 20,000 percent, depending on whether they are sold over the Internet or via conventional channels.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

OMS estimates that 200,000 people a year could be saved if counterfeit drugs were effectively countered.

OMS cites the case of a counterfeit excipient (an inactive substance used as a carrier for the active ingredients of a medication) which killed 300 people in Panama in 2006 and another which killed almost 100 babies in Nigeria due to counterfeit paracetamol (acetaminophen) syrup.

Counterfeit Viagra is somewhat dangerous but of more concern are counterfeit anti-malarial drugs or antibiotics used to treat potentially fatal conditions, says professor Marc Gentilini, a Chirac Foundation spokesman.

Gentilini is also worried about the possibility of populations losing confidence in modern medicine due to a lack of recovery from illness due to ineffective treatment. He contends that 30 to 70 percent of anti-malarial drugs in Africa are counterfeit and that under-dosing has reached catastrophic levels due to the absence of active content in the drugs.

Other obstacles to overcome include the presence of highly toxic components in counterfeit medicines, the unchecked proliferation of unofficial drug-dispensing facilities like pharmacies or drugstores, lax import-export regulations and corruption.

Those are a lot of obstacles to overcome, but the cost of overcoming them will be much less than that of coping with the results of a widespread propagation of illness and disease due to the use of inadequate and dangerous counterfeit drugs.