Fake malaria drug implicated in Burmese man’s death
A 23-year old man in Burma with malaria died because the medicine he received was fake, according to an investigative report by an international team of researchers published in PLoS Medicine.
The patient went to a rural hospital in East Burma with a fever and was diagnosed as having a straightforward case of falciparum malaria. He was treated with the vital antimalarial drug artesunate, labeled as made by the company Guilin Pharmaceutical in China. This drug is usually extremely effective, yet the patient went into a coma and died.
12 June 2006