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Mobile drug peddlers are a common sight virtually everywhere in Africa. Carrying the medicine on their heads, they roam the streets and villages. The more adventurous ones ride the ubiquitous mini-vans as they chase a sale. Whether genuine, fake or stolen, antimalarials are highly visible at the markets.

Customs officials in Luanda, Angola, searched a cargo container from China, they found 1.4 million packets of counterfeit Coartem, a malaria drug made by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG.

The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has alerted the public of fake Coartem tablets in circulation in some Western and Central African countries. The counterfeit Coartem tablets on the market "are mere dummy tablets with no anti-malaria activity and hence of no benefit to patients".

The batch numbers of counterfeit 'Coartem' as released by the Food and Drug Board (FDB), Government of Ghana, were X0089 and M1200 [18,19], the same as reported here.

A press handout copied to the GNA said the details of the fake batches of Coartem tablets are as follows; Batch Number : F1901, Expiry Date : 01.2114, Manufacturing date: 01.2012.

The packaging is in English and bears a falsified stamp of the Nigerian National Medicines Regulatory Agency, NAFDAC .Batch Number: F2261, Expiry Date : 01.2014, Manufacturing Date : 01.2012

Interestingly, it was reported that 'the fake Coartem contains three strips, each with eight tablets and sold at GH 6.00 while the original product contains four strips with six tablets and sold at GH 9.00. The eight tablets were present in each counterfeit Ghanaian blister is further evidence that they were counterfeit, as Novartis changed to six tablets/blister in 2007 while the samples were labelled as manufactured in 2008 and 2009.

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