Of 110 containers of pharmaceuticals entering West Africa searched in a special operation coordinated by the World Customs Organisation (WCO), 84 were found to contain fake pharmaceuticals. 82 million doses of fake medicine were confiscated which included anti-malarial and anti-HIV drugs and antibiotics.
Here in sub-Saharan Africa, over two children die every minute of malaria – which in 98% of cases can be cured with US $6 worth of genuine drugs. A spokesman for the WCO on BBC World Service radio last night said that the number of deaths caused directly by counterfeit medicine in Africa every year was in the hundreds of thousands. He called it “genocide”.
I might not use that word, but it is beyond doubt true that supplying counterfeit drugs to Africa causes more deaths than narcotics, than the wars in Syria, Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East combined, and several hundred times more deaths than terrorism.
The supply of fake life-saving drugs to the world’s poorest people is not only on a far greater scale than terrorism, it is morally just as evil, killing innocent civilian populations, particularly children, on an unimaginable scale of slaughter.
So why does this terrible evil receive virtually no mainstream media exposure? Is it because it happens to Africans, and the media coverage of Africa is so negative and relentlessly concentrated on disaster that it leads to a perception that the natural state of Africans is to die of disease?
It is worth noting that this terrible crime is being committed against Africa from outside – almost none of the fake pharmaceuticals are made in Africa. Here in Ghana I know the good people at the Food and Drugs Administration; they are well organised, well-qualified and well-equipped. But they are fighting a huge tide of fake drugs and organised crime on a massive scale.
In Ghana the fake drugs come overwhelngly from China amd India, and I suspect that is true across the BRICS. This terrible dark side – the WCO estimates that the counterfeit drugs trade yields profits of US$9 billion a year – should be borne in mind when considering the success of the BRICS and their possible counterweight to Western influence in foreign affairs.
India and China have vastly more economic resources and greater government control than the African states whose people are the victims of this evil trade. The word “genocide” used by the WCO spokesman causes you to think in this case, because this is mass killing perpetrated by Asians against Africans. The exporting states must face up to their moral obligation to take responsibility for the quality control of the manufacture of their exports, and in particular for controls at ports to ensure fake drugs are not exported.
The United Nations and the World Health Organisation should take action to ensure that the xporting state has a legal obligation effectively to stop the export of counterfeit drugs, with effective redress for victim states against the exporting state.
Let’s take a look at the trustees of Jimmy Savile’s charities, namely the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust and the Jimmy Savile Stoke Mandeville Charitable Trust.
Both charities now have the same group of three trustees, namely:
Luke Lucas
According to one of the charities’ financial statements, he’s a “self-made millionaire in the security industry with several confidential contracts with the Home Office”. He also happens to be a convicted criminal. When he was managing director and 94% owner of Sabrewatch, a security company which had big security contracts with Marks and Spencer, he and his company were both fined for using unlicensed guards, also known as thugs. He claimed he had to do so because of ‘terrorist’ threats. The judge, however, said he was guilty of persistently and knowingly breaking the law (see here)
Lady Gabrielle Greenbury (replaced James Collier at the JSSMCT in March 2012)
She’s married to Richard Greenbury, who was CEO at Marks and Spencer from 1988 to 1999, chairman of the pharmaceutical company Astrazeneca (giving his wife an obvious conflict of interest in her role as trustee of the said charities), and a director of Lloyds TSB. Gabrielle Greenbury was also a director of the dodgy security company Sabrewatch.
And she’s a director of Princedale, the marketing group, which is said to be a vehicle for Harry Solomon, co-founder of the Portland Trust, an obvious Zionist front described by Wikipedia as having “consistently highlighted the important role of economics in resolving the Middle East conflict”)
Roger Bodley
He’s a world-leading radiologist.
I fail to understand why are you all excited about Africa. Fake drugs are available everywhere. You can order them in the UK via internet if you want.
Ngozi Kwaku above is absolutely right – how dare the author just generalise in discussing the entire region as “Africa”. CM should have not only referred to every single country and its regions, but also mentioned every single individual there. By name.
🙂
The Cons’ advisers. Poppy Mitchell-Rose was on that train with Osborne when he was done for having a standard class ticket when travelling first class. I see her long term boyfriend is Ben Wright, a BBC reporter, and son of Tony Wright the Labour MP.
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/all-power-to-the-new-tories-6496057.html
Gleaned from HIGNFY who unbelievably have Conrad Black on. The BBC learn no lessons in spite of their current local difficulties.
Also heard from Ms Chloe Smith today that Admiralty Arch is going to be converted into a luxury hotel. It would have to be ‘luxury’ wouldn’t it. Never affordable flats or the like.
Smith is now in the Cabinet Office as a runner for Maude, Letwin, Clarke. Shapps et al. {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_Office}
800,000 dead in Rwanda. Who cares? Africans?
Says it all Dreoilin Thankyou – we live in a false world, fallacious, cooked up and it is wrong very wrong.
I was a bit carried away with some your writings on the middle East etc where injustice prevails… But i am very much surprised at the way you bundled together a whole unigue group of people into one – Africans. What does ‘Sub-Sahara’ mean? do we have Sub-Baltic Sea Europeans?
In as much as you may presume to be expert on African issues or be ‘sympathetic’ to its course dont be carried away to make statements that makes you as guilty as those you write against.
PS: you are never going to be kidnapped or bombed by ‘al-qaeda’ in Accra. I quess its one of those ‘calling a dog a bad name to hang it’ syndrome of the West. Read somewhere France is considering deploying troops to Mali against ‘militants’…its just a false flag to occupation.
Ecowas is capable of solving that problem but b’cos of their interest France and the rest of the so called developed world are not supporting. There’s a Ghana proverb that says that ‘though it tarries, it shall come to pass/it will end’. So let them occupy, kill, maim, rape etc. Their end will come. They will never be Permanent UNSC forever..
And CM welcome to Accra…will look for you one these days, guess you are here for the elections.
Same ol’ same ol’ – from King Leopold all the way to the present day..
http://blackagendareport.com/content/profitable-genocide-rwanda-and-uganda-annex-eastern-congo
@ Amre,
” I was a bit carried away with some your writings on the middle East etc where injustice prevails… But i am very much surprised at the way you bundled together a whole unigue group of people into one – Africans. What does ‘Sub-Sahara’ mean? do we have Sub-Baltic Sea Europeans?”
You are correct, and one does appreciate the diversity of Africa – North – South – East and West – culturally, religiously, and in many other spheres of human existence – you are correct.
The point is that Europe vis-a- vis Africa there is prejudice.
OT I know but it just occurred to me… Is it strange that nobody seems to be mentioning that Savile was a member of Mensa? A google search shows that his name was even on the list of prominent members displayed on the Mensa website. Been edited out now.
Did that give him any inappropriate access?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/major-banks-governmental-officials-and-their-comrade-capitalists-targets-of-spire-law-group-llps-racketeering-and-money-laundering-lawsuit-seeking-return-of-43-trillion-to-the-united-states-treasury-2012-10-25
Seems with this sort of capital investment a whole lot of good coild be achieved.
Oh for a Social Democracy.
Amre asks, “what does ‘Sub Sahara’ mean”. I have often asked myself the same question as it always appears in documents and articles written by people from the West.
Does it mean the equatorial/tropical belt or does it continue all the way to the Cape?
When I first began travelling to that area I used to look at the Sahara a lot from the aircraft windows looking for signs of life below. What struck me was how quickly it changed from desert to civilisation. You would see a road and then a few trees. Suddenly there were houses and the earth was shaped in fields and plantations. Soon we would be flying over airports and densly populated cities. If man could eke out a living, man was there.
Maybe this is where the term came from, I like to think that it was, although I agree that it must sound like an ignorant way to name the region to someone from the area.
Regarding the drugs, there are Chinese pharmacies all over the place and I know that people go to them for malaria cures and for other treatments. I go back there next week so I will try and warn my friends there of the problem. I would imagine some of them are aware of it already.
Wikipedia has a page on ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Saharan_Africa
A ringfencing strategy is in play regarding Jimmy Savile: he ‘groomed the entire nation’; ‘no entertainer ever had such access to the Establishment’; ‘he was the most prolific paedophile in the country’. Rubbish, rubbish, and rubbish.
Well he’s dead now, and won’t abuse anyone else. The problem isn’t him, now; it’s other people, other paedophiles, maybe even worse than him, or much worse, and in positions of more power, or much more power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sub-Saharan_Africa_definition_UN.png
Dark and lighter green: Definition of “Sub-Saharan Africa” as used in the statistics of the UN institutions.
Lighter green: However, the Sudan is classified as North Africa by the United Nations.[1]
“Says it all Dreoilin Thankyou – we live in a false world, fallacious, cooked up and it is wrong very wrong.”
Mark, you’re talking about the video,
‘Israeli Lobbyist Calls For False Flag To Start Iran War’?
Shocking stuff. I suspect he thought he was speaking in private. But he’s amazingly blunt and he probably doesn’t care whether he was recorded or not.
Makes me sick.
I’m off to bed.
Interesting little movie – a play centered around a discussion from Chomsky:
http://www.the99percentmovie.com/
“Land grabbing and food sovereignty in West and Central Africa”
http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4575-land-grabbing-and-food-sovereignty-in-west-and-central-africa
All of Africa’s problems are the fault of Whites. If they are buying counterfeit drugs from India or China, somehow Whites are to blame.
And being guilty, we should do something about it. For less than the price of a cup of coffee, you can feed an African family for a week. You’re a heartless bastard for not feeding these little African children.
Is this a one off or has it been going on for some time? Who is responsible for these purchases? Forgive me for thinking that whoever is responsible could well have a finger in the pie. And if it has been going on for some time then why continue to buy from sources that are ripping you off?
It would require a bit more sophistication to ensure the fake drugs were distributed in such a way as to try and make the ineffectiveness of the fake drugs – i.e. it would be necessary to ensure the fake drugs were not exclusively delivered to one region as the non-effectiveness would be likely to show up and trigger suspicions. So it’s possible elements of the African distribution may be involved in the scam.
The sheer scale of what you report would surely mean that the crime would be easy to investigate and the source of these compounds easily uncovered.
Where does the the corruption begin? Everything could be legit but fault could lie with the pharma companies themselves (who presumable must be aware of these massive orders. It’s unlikely, say, the AU calls GSK out of the blue and places an order for half a billion dollars, rather it would eb through GSK’s salespersons lobbying. The phamra companies could be the ones substitution the goods – providing the packaging etc (many pharmaceuticals use holograms on their products to try reassure us their products are genuine {I know, hardly foolproof but would mean a fairly sophisticated criminal would be involved}. The phrma companies will then of course have an internal set of paperwork that accounts for the half billion dollars worth of inventory that it needs to ship out. It would be an illegitimate defense for a pharma company to wash its hands of the matter and blaming its regional factories in cheap labour countries.
It should all be in the paper trail, which will help uncover the scam.
Well once more, the paper trail particularly those making the purchase order are the ones I would look to first before the “Asians” and the “Chinese”
@ Karel. 26 Oct, 2012 – 12:13 pm
“People have to take the risk of opting for a potentially fake drug just because they cannot afford the more expensive alternative.” – I have a feeling you are very wrong in that assumption. Sadly, I have no proof (just a general perception based on medical stories over the years) but do you have proof of your claims?
Actually you contradict yourself something rotten, advising the cheap alcoholic drinkers to buy (the more expensive) Hennessey instead.
Black list? no, not in my books, but black mark for for contradicting yourself.
(I have a feeling black list, black mark is going to be politically incorrect)
Unfortunately, you’re right. I don’t care if a bunch of Africans die. Africans have shown themselves to be incapable of forming worthwhile societies. Africa has some of the best land for mining in the world, and yet they can’t manage to figure out what to do at all without Americans, Europeans, and Chinese showing them.
In the same way that I don’t feel bad for all the cows and chickens that die on farms, I don’t feel bad for all the Africans that are too worthless to manage to get $6 to save themselves.
As terrible as it sounds, it’s true.
And before anyone criticizes me for comparing Africans to animals… You think the exact same thing yourself. You just look at them more like your family dog that you love rather than the nuisance fly in your home.
When you have matured passed the age playing with tractors and guns, you may recognise the idea to formulate other potential solutioms to an age old problem of empathy?….
Terrible man.
@William
While I don’t like your attitude to ‘Africans’, free speech requires me to support your right to hold and express that opinion.
My own beliefs are something like this.
In large parts of Asia and Europe, societies developed slowly from hunter gathering communities, through subsistence farming and on to the sophisticates but (sometimes) technologically limited societies of India, SE Asia, Europe. These then gradually developed science and technology up to the present day, slowly changing the societies we live in as they went.
Possibly because most of Africa is not smitten with cold winters, the move beyond subsistence farming was more limited in Africa. That said, don’t forget ancient Zimbabwe was a sophisticated society.
So, when rapacious Arabs & Europeans arrived on their territory, the Africans were at a disadvantage. Suddenly, their lands, were subject to confiscation for failure to pay taxes using this new fangled money the incomers had foisted upon them. They had to sink or swim in a very different foreign society, which had taken centuries to evolve in Europ & the Middle East; but was now being forced on them overnight.
None of that makes African people inferior to white people. But it DOES mean they were pushed to the bottom of a socio-economic system imposed on them from outside.
Imagine an alternative world where Africans had developed aircraft and nuclear weapons in the 18th century…
Dont tell me William,you’re one of those types that buys broken down WW2 Panzer tanks on specialist online auction sites,to park in your little garden in order to demarcate your territorial right to protect your next door neighbours ignorance?
Or were you outbid by yourself?
Oh,dont worry,we know its only because you care sooo much,right?
Human compassion is a cradled strangers wounded head in a wintery dusk.
Dont you agree William?
Of course you do!
There is a BBC type on Newswatch at the moment who in a discussion on the effect of the Savile scandal on the BBC, is reciting that myth that there is immense public trust in the BBC and that that trust must be restored in full! Ha!
He is Peter Horrocks. Head of the World Service and chair of the World Service trustees. Before that he was head of News from 2007. We remember, but he has probably forgotten, how much pro-Israel bias there has been in news reporting onscreen and on the website, especially during Cast Lead.
{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Horrocks}
This is about BBC News in its present incarnation under Helen Boaden and its failings in its reporting of the passing of the Health and Social Care Act this year.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1348835655.html
The repellent Max Clifford puts in his contribution. Is he counsel for the defence now? I wonder what his fees are?
‘He added: “We are talking about a lot of people that were huge names in the 60s and 70s and a lot of them barely remember what they did last week, genuinely.
“For them to try and recount what happened in a dressing room in 1965 or 1968 or 1972, genuinely they are frightened to death.”‘
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jimmy-savile-child-abuse-scandal-1401731
@Mary
For once, the assurance that, “If you are innocent, you have nothing to hide.” seems appropriate.
This leads me to think lots of people have a guilty secret. As someone commented earlier, all the police need now is Clifford’s list of new clients. 😉