Screening Device for African Countries to Spot Counterfeit Pills
Health officials in the United States are making sure that high-tech screening devices that are able to spot counterfeit pills are available in Africa. The device will help Africans to be able to spot fake malaria pills and ensure that a stop can be put to them circulating.
The food and drug admin center in the US revealed on Wednesday that Ghanan partners will be using a device that is funded by the US to help screen for counterfeit pills in 2 popular malaria tablets.
Counterfeit Malaria Pills
Around a third of malaria pills that are used in Africa at the moment are low-grade, or fake. This was proven by research that was performed last year. The mosquito disease makes suffers have chills, high fevers and very flu comparable symptoms. It is a killer and each year 666,000 people die of the disease. Ninety per cent of the deaths each year are in Africa. The new device is used by the FDA and is known as the CD3. It is very effective when used in Ghana and the FDA hopes to mass produce it and reduce malaria pill counterfeiting.
Asia and Africa are very popular destinations for counterfeit medicines but now drugs that are fake have been finding their way into the US as well. Hospitals and pharmacies are stocked with pills, and eighty per cent of them are made abroad. The marketplace is spreading and in order to keep up with control standards the FDA really needed to introduce this method of screening.
In 2012 alone the FDA released three drug warnings for the cancer drug Avastin, there was counterfeit versions of the drugs that were sold to US clinics and hospitals that specialise in treating cancer. Fakes had been given to patents, just how many is unknown. Another 5 years prior to this event and 80 US residents died from taking contaminated blood thinning meds that had been imported into the county from China.
Countries like turkey china and India have very weak standards of regulations and these drugs them get into countries like Africa, Europe and of course the US via networks of drugs that are sold by medical suppliers and wholesalers.
If patients take fake malaria drugs that do not have the necessary ingredients to fight malaria, then of course the patients will die with relying on them. Drugs that have weakened amounts of the disease fighting agents will result in patients’ immune systems building up immunities to the drugs and making other treatments hard to perform.
[box type=”important”]The FDA have said that this can also effect Americans because any resistance from Malaria will mean that strains of the disease will be passed to those that are travelling and people that enter into the US can pass it around. So before you buy your drugs, make sure that they are the originals. Of course you will only know after specialists have passed them through the new drugs screening machine.[/box]
