Counterfeit cures and their effect on HIV patients

Matthew Anstee reports on the salesmen who make their money by exploiting sick people living in poverty.

Nancy and her two sons, Bramwell and Walter.

When I first met Nancy she was so weak she struggled to climb the two steps into her hut. Her family’s accommodation was the reason we visited Nancy - we were there to build them a new mud hut.

Nancy’s frail skeleton gave away the fact that she was dying of AIDS. Her eyes gave away the fact that she’d lived a hard life and showed the immense fear she had of leaving her two sons, 14-year-old Bramwell and 10-year-old Walter, alone in the world. Both her husband and her baby had died of AIDS - their graves were outside their eroding hut.

A month later Nancy had died. We were told that her last words were ones of worry for Bramwell and Walter’s future. Who’s going to look after them now? She had asked.

I felt out of place going to pay my respects. I had this horrible feeling of guilt overwhelming me - surely we could have done a lot more? I looked at Nancy’s body, lying in a praying position on her bed, and I just stared trying to understand what I was seeing. She was dead. Nancy was never going to smile again.

Currently there is no cure for AIDS. However, there are drugs that can slow down the progress of HIV and thus slow down the damage to your immune system. These drugs are called Antiretrovirals (ARVs). In Kenya ARVs are widely available and free if you live in the right area. Travel costs to and from clinics to receive ARVs are the major problem for patients. They have to collect ARVs in person and can only get one month's supply at a time. The sad irony of it is that the sicker the person gets the harder it becomes for him or her to collect their ARVs.

After Nancy had died I found out that at the end of her life she was not taking ARVs. Instead she was taking an herbal concoction that would apparently save her life. I learnt that salesmen disguised as healers make door-to-door visits to people carrying the HIV virus and sell a drum of this herbal medicine for around £8 (1000 Kenyan Shillings), or as much as the person can afford.

I think the people selling these herbal medicines make money by exploiting the will to live. I was told that the patients do not know what makes up this supposed medicine but are simply told it will save their lives. These drugs don’t pretend to be ARVs, but they don’t do as they promise and they are manufactured below established standards of safety, quality and efficacy - therefore they are still counterfeit cures. Mama Mary, the charity head, explained to me that these kinds of concoctions ‘do more harm than good’, and she insisted that if Nancy had stuck to her ARVs then she would have survived longer.

So why would Nancy spend money on fake cures rather than depend upon a proven success of free ARVs?

There are an increasing number of reports about HIV patients stopping ARV courses for this kind of medicine. The salesmen who push counterfeit cures on them give patients like Nancy false hope. Lack of health education means they believe that these drugs could save their lives. These salesmen target sick people who, given the choice, would rather pay for drugs on their doorstep than have to travel miles for free ones.