Several children in Egypt are reported to have died after being mistakenly given fake antibiotics.
In one case a two-year-old child with a high temperature died after hospital doctors injected him with drugs that turned out to be counterfeit.
Egyptian media say more than $160m worth of fake medicines have been seized there in the past month alone – though the problem is a global one.
A recent report by the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene estimated that Fake Antibiotics kill as many as 300,000 children each year.
Antibiotics are one of the most counterfeited medicines. In July, counterfeit batches of Unictam were found in several provinces in Egypt with one patient suffering a miscarriage after taking the counterfeit drug.
In 2015 it was reported that of the total number of drugs on the market in Egypt, 30 per cent were counterfeit, with critics pointing to a lack of laws to deter the practice.
In 2017, Egypt authorities announced that they had discovered thousands of packages of counterfeit hepatitis C medicine.
Egypt’s healthcare service has been plagued with controversy in recent weeks after earlier this month a nurse inserted a needle into a newborn baby blindfolded. According to social media posts the nurse and his friend bet each other breakfast over whether he could inject the baby without looking.
That same week an air force officer was accused of violently attacking nurses at a government hospital in Menufia Governorate with one reportedly suffering a miscarriage after she was beaten with a rope.