Global Health Change: Counterfeit Medicine

Alanna Shaikh, in a July 17th GlobalHealth.Change.Org posting reports on “a future of cat and mouse between manufacturers of fake medicines and the technology that detects it.”

Here are several strong quotes from the posting:

• The proliferation of new medicines will make it easier to slip a fake into the mix; so will the increasing capacity to produce authentic looking fake pills and packaging. At the same time, a host of innovation ideas for authenticating medicine are taking hold. At any given moment, the balance will be in favor of either the black market or the legitimate manufacturers.


• The drugs that get counterfeited tend to be the most important ones. Anti-retrovirals, tuberculosis drugs, anti-malarial medications.


• The worst fake medicines contain the drugs they claim to, but in amounts too small to do any good. Instead, they lead to resistance from the microbes they are meant to eliminate.


• According to one source, between 50% and 90& of drugs in some African and Asian countries are counterfeit.


• Technology is neutral. It's also increasing the ways that we can detect and eliminate counterfeit medicines.

XStream Systems believes that its technology, which uses EDXRD and allows the user to authenticate medications non-destructively inside their sealed container is a significant step forward in combating this global issue.

To read the entire posting follow this link:
http://globalhealth.change.org/blog/view/friday_futures_counterfeit_medicine