A medical dilemma

ACCORDING to the World Health Organization (WHO), counterfeit medicines account for approximately 10 per cent of all medicines by sales in 2006. Meanwhile, the Centre for Medicine in the Public Interest in the US estimates that US$75 billion in counterfeit medicines were sold in 2010.

In Africa, 100,000 deaths are estimated to be caused by counterfeit drugs every year, while counterfeit malaria and tuberculosis drugs result in 700,000 deaths globally annually, according to the International Policy Network.

To counter this growing problem, technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification Tags (RFID), randomised serial numbers and bar codes are increasingly being used to track and trace medical drugs throughout the supply chain.