Counterfeit and substandard medicines in developing countries are becoming a critical problem. A report released by Oxfam earlier this month(1) claims to have the answers: stop treating fake medicines as an intellectual property problem, and do whatever it takes to bolster local regulation. Oxfam's diagnosis is only half-correct.  Unfortunately, the same can't be said for its prescriptions. 

Oxfam's main beef with current approaches to the problem the conflation in certain pieces of legislation of intellectual property issues such as patents with trademarks. Exhibit A is Kenya's 2008 Anti Counterfeiting Act, which was designed to protect Kenyan citizens from the increasingly ubiquitous counterfeit products that are flooding the local market, from fake tyres to dodgy toothbrushes. 

While such products are not without their dangers and economic costs, a more pressing concern is the staggering proportion of counterfeit and substandard medicines circulating in the country, which recent studies have put as high as 38 per cent(2).

Proponents of the 2008 Act hoped it would finally put a floor under the plummeting quality of the country's medicine supply; as most physicians know, medicines that contain therapeutically sub-optimal levels of active ingredient can promote drug resistance and lead to clinical failure.