A two-year-old boy is rushed to a Kwale hospital in Kenya’s Coast Province. The clinical officer at the health facility diagnoses febrile convulsions and quickly rushes to the hospital’s pharmacy for a dose of medicine that will ease the boy’s suffering. But nothing happens, so the boy is given additional doses but still the boy does not respond. Finally, he dies. Only later, upon investigation, is it discovered that the drug had no active ingredients. The drug was a fake.
Counterfeit drugs in Kenya have been known to exist for a long time. Walk into any pharmacy in search of a certain drug prescribed by a doctor. If the price is too high, the pharmacist will tell you of yet another prescription drug that works just the same but comes cheaper than the one requested.
