A surge in counterfeit and poor quality medicines means that 250,000 children a year are thought to die after receiving shoddy or outright fake drugs intended to treat malaria and pneumonia alone, the doctors warned. Registers of fake drugs found in the field should also be made open to the public, the doctors say. There was an immediate need for simple and rapid tests that doctors could use to verify drug quality, he added. The counterfeit drug is packaged to look like Iclusig, an anticancer medicine used to treat adults with chronic myeloid leukaemia and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. “Regarding online pharmacies, there is poor public understanding of how to differentiate between a legitimate online pharmacy and an illegal one.

Source: The Guardian March 11, 2019 21:00 UTC