Outraged by recent survey findings that 30 percent of the country's imported medicines were fake, Kenya is using an unusual strategy to crack down on the illegal drug trade – deploying its intelligence services.

A recent study anti-malarial drugs bought in the African countries of Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda revealed depressing results: 35 percent contained too little active ingredients or failed to dissolve, rendering them useless. Another third were found capable of causing the malaria parasite to develop resistance – and were drugs that the World Health Organization (WHO) understandably wants to ban.

These fake and substandard drugs –and the counterfeiters who produce them – are being blamed for at least 200,000 of the 2.7 million deaths caused by malaria each year in Africa.

But Kenya, for one, is not taking this situation sitting down. Outraged by its own National Quality Control Laboratories and Pharmacy and Poisons Board survey that revealed that about 30 percent of drugs in Kenya were counterfeit (some were no more than chalk or water), the country is taking action.

According to Medical Services Minister Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, his department would work with Kenya's National Security and Intelligence Services to develop surveillance methods to decrease the number of counterfeits in the market and that the authorities will employ methods used to stop drug traffickers.

Counterfeit drugs is a serious matter in Kenya – so serious that in April, British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline urged Nairobi to crack down on imports of fake medicines, warning that public health was at risk. In particular, there is concern that 16 percent of malaria drugs in Kenya is fake. Officials are also alarmed about statistics that show that malaria:

• Kills 34,000 children under the age of five each year
• Threatens the lives of more than 25 million of its 35-million population
• Accounts for 20 percent of all hospital admissions, and between 30 to 50 percent of outpatients 

John Ngirachu covered Nyong'o's recent tour of the Pharmacy and Poisons Board in his article in Kenya's Sunday Nation newspaper, and quoted him as saying, “We will soon have a joint meeting with the NSIS (National Security Intelligence Service) since they have the means to track and arrest those involved. Most people use the drugs unintentionally. Those who trade in them are trading people’s lives."

According to the minister, the drugs would be eliminated over time as surveillance increased.

Unable to name the source of the counterfeit drugs, he stated that, “It is just like drug trafficking; you catch the traffickers first and trace the drug back to its source.” He also said that the board, which registers and licenses pharmacies in the country and approves drugs for the Kenyan market, would check on pharmacies selling counterfeit medicine and take appropriate action. The board has already banned drugs containing artemisinin, also known as artemisinin monotherapies.

Kenya's counterfeit drugs problem may be serious, but so is the Medical Services Minister. And as if to demonstrate this, he warned prospective counterfeiters trying to sell fake drugs to Kenyans that they " will be caught very soon and answer for your sins…"