The FDA will soon be launching a new tool, Counterfeit Detector Device, that it will use to detect fake malaria drugs.
Malaria is known to infect nearly 200 million and kill 66,000, mostly children, every year across the world, especially in Africa and Asia. The illness is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, which is spread to humans through the bite of an infected female Anopheles mosquito.
One of the most important ways to tackle the problem is to address the growing prevalence of substandard and fake malaria drugs sold in the market these days. According to a National Institutes of Health study that was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, more than 40 percent of malaria drugs sold in Asia and Africa are counterfeits or of very poor quality.
To tackle this growing concern, the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. has announced that it will soon launch a new tool named the Counterfeit Detector Device, Version 3 (abbreviated as CD3) that will detect all fake medicines in the market, making it easier for the administration to prevent them being sold to patients. The device is a hand-held, electronic apparatus, which has a monitor, cameras, data storage capabilities and makes use of ultraviolet and infrared light.
Any fake drug package will look different from the authentic packing of the original drug when seen thorough this device and hence the FDA can easily detect the fake medicines.
"CD-3 illustrates the spirit of innovation and the commitment to public health that our scientists have," said Melinda K. Plaisier, FDA's acting Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs. "They saw a need and invented a technology to address it. It started off solving an immediate problem in FDA labs, and now is being leveraged to impact global health."
