Substandard And Counterfeit Drugs Case Study

In developing countries, education pertaining to substandard and counterfeit drugs is not a priority, or more accurately, is a neglected issue. Consequently, knowledge about substandard and counterfeit drugs is very weak among both consumers and healthcare providers which resulted in what stated by some researchers that consumers in developing countries purchase substandard and counterfeit drugs due to ignorance about health implications (Asuamah, Prempeh, & Boateng, 2013). This is a very serious problem especially in the light that it seems there is no clear strategy, if not no strategy at all, about how to mitigate this problem. The main problem pertaining to this weak knowledge about substandard and counterfeit drugs is that it could negatively …show more content…
However, for any campaign to discourage consumers from buying substandard and counterfeit drugs to be effective there should be in the first place reasonable knowledge and awareness about the drawbacks of substandard and counterfeit drugs. Other factor complicating the problem of weak knowledge about substandard and counterfeit drugs is the disagreement about their definition. In fact, the educational efforts to raise the awareness about substandard and counterfeit drugs problem is jeopardized by differing national definitions of these products adopted by different countries. However, this problem of weak knowledge about substandard and counterfeit drugs seems to be not restricted to developing countries, but common and hindering the efforts to combat the problem even in developed countries. For example, a survey conducted in Europe revealed that only 18% of the respondents aware of the presence of counterfeit pharmaceuticals in the market (Anti-Counterfeiting Group, …show more content…
For example, one of the educational strategies reported in the literature for shifting consumer from buying substandard and counterfeit drugs is highlighting the risks that accompany fake drugs (Tom et al., 1998). This could be accomplished through publicizing tragedies encounter consuming substandard and counterfeit drugs like injuries or death. Nonetheless, although this strategy could be effective in the west, but same strategy in the developing countries may not be without negative impact. Some policy makers in developing countries expressed concern over using this last education strategy (highlighting risk) as it may discourage, especially in remote rural areas, modern medication and encourage alternative medicine, hence exacerbate an already existing problem. Some of those policy makers explicitly mentioned presence of markets where conventional and alternative medicines are often sold alongside in the same outlet with conventional medicines sold in simple, or even no packaging at all (Alfadl et al., 2013). While selling medicines with no package cause suspicion to a western consumer, consumers in developing countries, especially in rural areas, are accustomed to it because alternative medicine is popular with them. Unfortunately, as packaging is an important feature to differentiate between genuine and fake, stripping-off medicines from their original pack enables