Just one year after worry sprung up throughout China over a potential large-scale outbreak of avian influenza (H5N1) – which led to the slaughter of millions of ducks and chickens around the country – PRC residents now face another hazard: counterfeit bird flu medication. In late August, Shanghai police broke up a piracy ring that had sold over RMB4.6 million worth of fake Tamiflu, one of two medications found to be effective against the virus.  The counterfeiters were selling via the internet to customers in Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces and several Southeast Asian countries.

But this was not the first discovery of fake Tamiflu. Last year, U.S. Customs seized 51 shipments of the counterfeit medication suspected to originate from China.

The threat posed by counterfeit drugs is dire as H5N1 becomes a more serious problem worldwide. In the first eight months of this year, China reported 12 human cases of bird flu including eights deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), up from 2005, when eight cases and five deaths were recorded for the year. If a global pandemic were to occur, experts estimate between 2 million and 7.4 million deaths.

The recent Tamiflu instance is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the countless counterfeiting schemes in China, some of which have caused serious harm or death to users. In one of this year’s biggest domestic scandals, 11 people in Guangzhou were reported dead in May due to kidney failure caused by taking fake Armillarisni A (a drug used to treat gallbladder inflammation) produced in Heilongjiang Province. In August, state media reported that the deaths of six Chinese citizens was suspected of being caused by a tainted antibiotic made in Anhui Province.

According to a June testimony by Peter Pitts, president of the U.S.-based Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese die each year due to counterfeit or substandard medicine. In the first 11 months of 2005, 461 illegal pharmaceutical facilities in the PRC had been destroyed.

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