(September 15, 2009) As much as 50% of medicines sold in Africa could be fake, according
to the president of the Vatican's health care council. Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski,
president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, affirmed this at a conference
of the International Federation of Catholic Pharmacists. The four-day meeting ended
today in Poznan, the fifth largest city of Poland. The theme of the conference focused
on ethics and awareness for pharmacists in the field of medicine security. Archbishop
Zimowski's denunciation took up statistics from the World Health Organization and
added that in some African nations, actually as many as 60% of medications are adulterated.
The WHO contends that in regions of Southeast Asia and Latin America, as many as 30%
of medicines could be adulterated. "The manipulation and falsification of medicines,"
the archbishop explained in his intervention "primarily affects children. Fake antibiotics
and fake vaccinations cause grave harm for their health. There are many deaths because
of respiratory illnesses among African children, because they are treated with false
antibiotics.” Citing "Caritas in Veritate," the archbishop affirmed that counterfeit
medication is an ethical emergency in developing countries. He invited Catholic pharmacists
to "courageously denounce every form of falsification and counterfeiting of medicine,
and oppose its distribution."