Can the Chinese pharmaceutical industry overcome its reputation for producing bogus medicine?
Jun 11 2013,...Mao's great medical innovation was withheld from the world for four decades because of Chinese military secrecy and intense global pharmaceutical competition. Today, it is the key ingredient in the frontline treatment for malaria in Africa.
Yet before artemisinin even has a chance to get a foothold in the battle against malaria, the drug is in danger of becoming a casualty of China's own overzealous profiteering and global drug counterfeiting.
In East Africa, artemisinin combination therapy, or ACT, became the preferred treatment for malaria a few years ago. Along with the massive influx of lifesaving drugs, first from European manufacturers and now from China, came a deluge of fakes.
In Uganda and Tanzania, whose lands form most of the mosquito-infested Northern and Southern shores of giant Lake Victoria, the malaria death rates are among the highest in the world. Widespread regulatory failure and unscrupulous business practices have created a market flooded with bad drugs. Coupled with China's already bad rap as a producer of inferior goods such as cheap shoes, knock-off phones, and faulty condoms, the reputation of China's malaria cure is perched on a precipice.....
http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/06/fake-fake-drugs-from-china-whats-stopping-a-cure-for-malaria-in-africa/276750/
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