Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia - Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Ben Hirschler
Figures released Tuesday showed a record number of people were infected by HIV in 2003, although more money than ever is being spent to fight it.
The World Health Organization and UNAIDS, the United Nations group fighting HIV/AIDS, are drawing up ambitious plans to get antiretroviral treatment to three million people in the developing world by the end of 2005.
But Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said the mass roll-out of treatment would bring with it problems of substandard and counterfeit drugs.
"One of the things we are going to see, very surely, is a lot of bogus medicine coming in the slipstream...the market will be flooded with these products, be sure," he told an HIV/AIDS Communications Forum in London.
Bogus drugs are already a major problem in many Asian and African countries.
The World Health Organization warned earlier this month that counterfeiting, mostly of antibiotics and drugs to treat tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS, was widespread and "often leads to death."
In Thailand, substandard medicines are thought to account for 8.5 percent of all supplies on the market. A recent WHO survey of anti-malarials in seven African countries found 20-90 percent failed quality testing.
Feachem said the problem could grow as more antiretroviral drugs were delivered to Africa and other AIDS hot spots.
Many of the medicines are expected to be supplied by generic drug firms in the developing world, who have helped drive the cost of treatment down to $1 a day or less.
But the same countries that produce high quality generics are also the main sources of completely bogus drugs. As a result, he said, the public needed to be on guard against medicines that are "packaged to be very hard to distinguish, like a fake bank note."
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