Fake medicine a cause of concern in Kashmir

It has been recently revealed that kashmirirs have consumed large stocks of drugs which were sub-standard and spurious, it was found in the lab test that as many as 27 drugs were fake and drugs worth of 21.23 lakh were seized and 13 different kind of drugs were already consumed which were worth corers and what is astonishing is that most of the drugs which were found to be fake were sold in government hospitals, it is estimated that 2.3 lakh tablets of sub-standard drugs were consumed in different health institutes of which maximum were consumed in hospitals under Director health services Kashmir.

It is Apathetic and pathetic on part of government and concerned authority who are sleeping, while these spurious drugs are being sold out to people. One more question arises is our media credible or not, because we are hearing the word about counterfeit drugs being sold out in Kashmir valley for a decade or so from the leading newspapers of Kashmir but unfortunately they never announced the names of companies or people who are selling these drugs in valley, it is responsibility of leading newspapers to make the names of such heinous criminals public so that people will become aware.    

Here are the side effects of using counterfeit drugs after consuming spurious drugs.

1:- Antibiotic resistance: The relationship between counterfeit drugs and antibiotic resistance is two fold. Although, drug counterfeiting is one of the important causes of antibiotic resistance in developing countries, one also has to keep in mind the likelihood of false reports of antimicrobial resistance in an area where drug counterfeiting is widespread.

2:- Therapeutic failure: Therapeutic failure may also be associated with the use of fake drugs containing insufficient or no active ingradient, leading to loss of confidence by the patients on the conventional drugs and public health program. An estimated 700,000 deaths annually are caused by fake antimalarials and tuberculous agents, suggesting that the total annual mortality due to the menace will definitely be much higher (Harris et al., 2009). Various instances where fake drugs resulted in deaths due to failure to treat life-threatening conditions have been reported in the literature. In 2001 about 192,000 people were reported to have died in China as a result of fake drugs. Also about 2500 people died in Niger following the administration of counterfeits of meningococcal-vaccines (containing no active ingredient) to some 60,000 people during the 1995 meningitis epidemic

3:- Toxicity: Acute renal failure due to poisoning from diethylene glycol packaged as a cough syrup which resulted in hundreds of deaths in Haiti, Bangladesh, Nigeria, India and Argentina are examples of the potentially fatal effects of counterfeit drugs containing a toxic ingredient in place of the original active ingredient

4:- the use of Counterfeit medicine many result in Hypertension, kidney failures, respiratory disorders, cardiac disorder and most fatal disease like Cancer due to carcinogens present in fake drugs.

We must spread this word to everyone on the web so that people would become aware about the deteriorating effects of using counterfeit medicine and we must protests so as to force media to bring out the name of companies and the concerned people who are involved in the lucrative business of Spurious drugs.