WHO Warns On False Medicines "Ravaging World Markets"

Along with a French humanitarian group, the World Health Organization has sent out an alarm warning about the spread of "huge quantities of false medicines in the world markets each year, especially in the markets of developing countries, according to the Xinhua news agency.

The French daily Le Monde quoted WHO officials and humanitarian groups as saying that in Africa, 60% of the medicines and nutritional drinks being sold could be false medicines bearing the trade marks of European and North American producers.

In Nigeria, it is alleged by the WHO officials, 109 children died in 1990 after drinking syrup which was actually motor anti-freeze, and in Bangladesh, nearly 250 children died in 1993 for similar reasons. The French Medecins sans Frontiers group said that its staff discovered in 1995 that false vaccines against meningitis were circulating in Niger, West Africa (Marketletters passim).