Imagine being sick in Kenya. Unlike hundreds of Nairobians, and others, you can afford to go to Nairobi Hospital instead of Kenyatta Hospital. The doctor who attends to you gives a diagnosis and sends you to the pharmacy. The nightmare that is shared by thousands of Kenyans begins.

The drugs purchased, without the correct dosage of active ingredients, fail you. If you are lucky, you get better, but only for a short while. You illness could also take a turn for the worse making it necessary for your hospitalization.

Across the world fake drugs are increasingly easily to purchase over the counter. Between 6% and 10% of medicine on the world market is reported to be counterfeit with estimated sales of over US $35 billiona year. The problem is more serious in developing countries.

Several factors promote this alarming increase in the inability of governments to provide medical coveragebut chieg among them is poverty, which compels the citizens of these nations to opt for generic drugs. However, the generic drug trade hardly accounts for the increase in counterfeit drugs. Generic drugs though providing cheap access to the medicinal value of brand name drugs,require more government supervision. .

Corruption has played a major role in the proliferation of fake drugs, allowing the manufacture, importation, and final dispensation of sub-standard drugs. Law enforcers look the other way as industry regulators own or operate several dispensaries and pharmacies (the use of the fake drugs allowing them to maximize their profit margin) and as their greed drives them to commit mass murder.

In several African countries the authorities have stepped in to stop counterfeiters, but there is not a legal framework to sustain these efforts. Inadequate resources for drug regulation enforcement and a lack of adequate training for national drug regulatory authorities' personnel beget a consistent failure to detect and prosecute offending pharmacueticals. In Kenya fake drugs are sold primarily as generics

With regard to this Kenyan pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders are calling on the government to step up and enact regulation to this scourge that costs as dearly, even as it enriches the Dr Jekyll's behind the counters.

In most countries, and primarily India as the source of the bulk of our generic drugs,
 there is a laxity in regulatory procedures and requirements for export drugs
that permits the creation and distribution of poor quality generics or even outright placebos.

Makes you think twice, doesn't it?

The Kenyan government must act to avert trade in counterfeit drugs. Enacting new drug laws and updating existing ones for prohibiting counterfeit medicines,establishing institutions for the regulation of medicines and clearly setting out in the drug laws, the power, duties and responsibilities of these institutions; training of personnel, including enforcement officers, for national drug control; making available necessaryfinancial and other resources; ensuring that the drug laws areenforced; and fostering international cooperation in the control of pharmaceuticals. Perhaps soon, a Kenyan buying a prescription written out by his doctor will be confident that it will make him better, and not send him to an early grave.