Nature: the proportion of fake drugs in developing countries is as high as 10%. Antimalarial drugs and antibiotics are the most common

According to the latest data report of the World Health Organization (who), about 10% of drugs in the drug market of middle and low-income developing countries are substandard or fake at all According to the report, the most common types of fake drugs are malaria treatment drugs and antibiotics In addition, cancer, heart disease, HIV treatment drugs, contraceptives and painkillers are also often fake The latest data comes from two who reports released at the end of last month, the first time the agency has focused on counterfeit drugs in nearly 10 years The findings focus on fraud and low-quality drugs in low - and middle-income countries - 42% of the 150000 counterfeit drug cases reported to the agency over the past four years have come from Africa, 21% from the Americas and 21% from Europe The proportion of all kinds of fake drugs (source: nature) the first-hand data about fake drugs has been relatively small, because there was a lack of specific registration system in the past Who established a global reporting system for substandard drugs in 2013, which is intended to expose substandard drugs that do not meet national inspection standards or infringe intellectual property rights Since May this year, its reporting goal has shifted from protecting intellectual property rights to focusing on public health But researchers say the system can only reveal the tip of the iceberg in the total amount of counterfeit drugs, and many counterfeit or substandard drugs that are rampant in the market cannot be traced So far, who has trained 550 people in 141 countries to track the drugs The report estimates that about 10% of the drugs in circulation in poorer countries are fake drugs, mainly due to the limited technical ability to implement quality standards, which makes it difficult to identify the true and the false About 16.9 children who die of pneumonia every year are due to the use of substandard and inferior antibiotics Mariangela Simao, who assistant director general for drugs, vaccines and pharmaceuticals, said that low-quality drugs not only fail to treat or prevent diseases, but can also lead to more serious microbial resistance If patients take unqualified antibiotics which can not treat infection completely, it may lead to the spread of drug-resistant infection French scholar Marc gentilini said that people underestimate the public health harm caused by fake drugs, and more importantly, there is no ideal solution to this problem.