Local production of drugs is a long-standing slogan in the aid industry and in many individual countries and has now been taken up by the African Union. But its superficial attraction hides vested interests, expensive subsidies and dangers to quality.
DDT is much-demonised by superstitious Westerners but it has saved millions of lives all over the world (including the USA and Europe) and continues to save lives in Africa. But not for much longer: the WHO's reluctant acceptance of DDT in 2006 has been reversed in favour of a range of human experiments using poor people as guinea-pigs.
A barrage of email spam highlights the dangers from bad drugs as everyone worries about swine flu but the plague of counterfeits is constant threat everywhere and particularly in poor countries. Taxes and corruption make business difficult or impossible for legitimate medicines but open the field to counterfeit dealers who can pay the bribes and make huge profits on their cheap imitations.
Before the USA institutes a federal body for 'comparative effectiveness' review of new medical treatments, it should take a look at England's rationing body NICE - which has denied innovative medicines to thousands of patients.
Resistance to the latest anti-malarial drugs is building up in the Mekong Delta and will threaten much of Asia and Africa: the WHO has just put out a warning that catches up with years of research saying the same thing. Mutation plays a part but so do counterfeits, accounting for a quarter of all medicines in developing countries and a third in Africa.
The WHO is trying to fight the huge international trade in counterfeits but faces opposition from India and others, driven by a strange coalition ranging from the far Left to business organisations: this author blows away some of the straw men these people have built up. Barun Mitra says robust trademark protection will give Indian companies a stake in quality and give Indian, and worldwide, patients the guarantees that they need.
Drug resistant malaria portends a health disaster, provoked by widespread substandard drugs. While cheaper drugs may help, this will not solve a problem that is embedded by other factors such as weak trademark laws.
