Kenya tackles drug counterfeiting
A two-year-old boy is rushed to a Kwale hospital in Kenya’s Coast Province. The clinical officer at the health facility diagnoses febrile convulsions and quickly rushes to the hospital’s pharmacy for a dose of medicine that will ease the boy’s suffering. But nothing happens, so the boy is given additional doses but still the boy does not respond. Finally, he dies. Only later, upon investigation, is it discovered that the drug had no active ingredients. The drug was a fake. Read how health officials and drug manufacturers are developing ways to battle counterfeiting in an effort to keep this African nation from becoming what some would call “a healthcare catastrophe.”
By Denis Gathanju
7 March 2008