"Bad Medicine" (A Documentary)

It could be described as the perfect crime. Fake drugs kill vulnerable people: the weak, the old, and the sick. And once consumed, the evidence is destroyed. In 2003, four children died after undergoing cardiac surgery in a top teaching hospital in Nigeria. The adrenalin drips they had been fed with contained fake drugs. When Dr. Dora Akunyili, the dynamic regulator of Nigeria''s Food and Drug Agency (Nafdac), took the job at Nafdac in 2001, more than half of all drugs in Nigeria were counterfeits or substandard. Some contained just chalk or flour. Other, only a fraction of the active ingredient, triggering drug resistant strains of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV: the world''s biggest killers. In her passionate bid to stop a lethal explosion of fakes, Dr. Akunyili has been shot at and had her offices burnt down; but she is not deterred. BBC Reporter, Olenka Frenkiel, follows Dora as she inspects street markets, challenges manufacturers and demands answers at an international conference in Paris. In the UK, counterfeits have been found in high street chemists, and a fake Diazepam and Viagra factory was recently discovered in North London. All over the US, fake botox, heart disease and cancer drugs have found their way into hospitals and pharmacies; their death toll unknown. Fake drugs could be in a pharmacy near you. The BBC was honored in 2006 with a Peabody Award for their resourceful, physical risk-taking reporting in making this documentary.