Cambodia Sends Police Door-to-Door to Stop Counterfeits

In northwest Cambodia’s Pailin province, on the border with Thailand, counterfeit drug surveillance has taken on a personal meaning as local malaria has evolved artemisinin resistance by sending police door-to-door to local pharmacies and confiscating counterfeit anti-malarials as well as spreading the word of free treatment.

Northwest Cambodia’s Pailin province, on the border with Thailand, counterfeit drug surveillance has taken on a personal meaning as local malaria has evolved artemisinin resistance. The World Health Organization has recently reported that fake drugs have helped to inoculate the disease from the strongest known cure, artemisinin, in this region.

Cambodia has started sending police on rounds of local pharmacies and shops asking for anti-malarial drugs as part of the malaria containment project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Drug sellers from Pailin and other remote areas were trained by officers from the Ministry of Health and the National Centre for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control receiving information on the danger of artemisinin-resistant falciparum malaria spreading.

Police have instructed pharmacists to instruct potential anti-malarial purchasers that free treatment is available around Pailin, and actively search for counterfeit anti-malarial meds to confiscate in these pharmacies, reports Malarial Containment, a publication of the World Health Organization.

Drug inspector Nuth Tith says that since he started his new drug inspection job three years ago, he has found less and less malaria drugs in the 25 pharmacies and drug stores he constantly inspects in Pailin.

“[In the past] there were a lot of malaria drugs on sale,” he recalls. “Now, we hardly find any malaria medicines.”