Fake drugs jeopardise malaria fight

A new study has found that attempts to control malaria in Africa are threatened by fake and poor quality anti-malarial drugs. The study published in Malaria Journal warned that counterfeit medicines could harm patients and promote drug resistance among malaria parasites.

According to the researchers from the Wellcome Trust-Mahosot Hospital-Oxford University Tropical Medicine Research Collaboration malaria is believed to kill about 800,000 people a year while some of the fake tablets are said to have originated in China.

The scientists examined fake and substandard anti-malarial drugs that were found on sale in 11 African countries between 2002 and 2010.

They discovered that some counterfeits contained a mixture of the wrong pharmaceutical ingredients which would initially alleviate the symptoms of malaria but would not cure it.

Failure to take action will put at risk the lives of millions of people, particularly children and pregnant women.

Some of the ingredients in the tablets could cause potentially serious side effects, the study found, especially if they were mixed with other drugs a patient might be taking, like anti-retrovirals to treat HIV.

The malaria parasite can, after a period of time, develop resistance to the drugs being used to treat it.

This has happened in the past with medicines such as chloroquine and mefloquine.

The researchers warned that the fake drugs could lead to the same effect on artemisinin, one of the most effective drugs now being used to treat malaria.

They said small quantities of artemisinin derivatives are being put in some of the counterfeit products to ensure that they pass authenticity tests.

However, at the level it is present, these drugs are unlikely to rid the body of malaria parasites, but could enable them to build up resistance to artemisinin, the study warns.

The Asian origin of the fake drugs was identified using traces of pollen found in some of the tablets.

The lead researcher on the study, Paul Newton, called for urgent measures from African governments to tackle counterfeit anti-malarias. “Failure to take action will put at risk the lives of millions of people, particularly children and pregnant women.”

“The enormous investment in the development, evaluation and deployment of anti-malarias is wasted if the medicines that patient actually take are, due to criminality or carelessness, of poor quality and do not cure.”

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Posted by AfricaSTI on January 30, 2012. Filed under Lead Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry