Falsified medicines in Africa: all talk, no action

2014 Newton et al. Open access article published under the terms of CCBY. Published by Elsevier Ltd. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(14)70279-7/fulltext#aff2
The Lancet Global Health, Volume 2, Issue 9 , Pages e509 – e510, September 2014
doi:10.1016/S2214-109X(14)70279-7
Poor-quality medicines and medical products, both substandard and falsified, cause avoidable morbidity, mortality, drug resistance, and loss of faith in health systems, especially in low-income and middle-income countries.1—3  We report the analysis of two falsified medicines from Angola and discuss what lessons such a discovery could hold.
The tablets were seized at Luanda docks in June, 2012, after failing Minilab testing.4 , 5  The seized shipment was enormous (1· 4 million packets), and hidden in loudspeakers in a container from China.4  One sample was labelled as an adult course of the vital antimalarial drug artemether-lumefantrine, and as being manufactured by “Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation”; it also bore an Affordable Medicines Facility—malaria logo (figure ). Another sample was labelled as the broad-spectrum anthelmintic mebendazole, and as being manufactured by “Janssen-Cilag SpA”.  Read more here