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Azerbaijan delivered to Zambia counterfeit medicine in the framework of the fight against deadly diseases, writes, UN expert, Director of the Laboratory for Molecular and Cellular Dynamics at Boston University Muhammad H. Zaman in the Project Syndicate analytical site.

“One does not need to spend a lifetime in the global health-care sector to appreciate that substandard or counterfeit drugs are a major public-health hazard. These bogus products have infiltrated pharmaceutical supply chains from Azerbaijan to Zambia, wrecking the most promising programs to control, manage, and eradicate deadly diseases. Yet little is being done to stop this criminal activity,” the material reads.

According to the expert Around $75 billion of substandard drugs are sold annually, causing an estimated 100,000 deaths worldwide, and making many more people seriously ill. The trade in inferior drugs also undermines fragile public-health systems in poor countries.

“Yet the fight against substandard drugs has never been taken as seriously as other global health crises such as malaria, HIV, or maternal and infant mortality. This may be because there is no obvious solution,” the article reads.

Azerbaijani news portal "Haqqin.az" notes that this is not the first scandal erupted in abroad in connection with the counterfeit drugs supply realized by drug-mafia from Azerbaijan. Earlier in Turkey a network was uncovered that sold anti-cancer drugs from Azerbaijan to Turkish patients having cancer.

"I wonder how many counterfeit drugs these networks spread in Azerbaijan, where the drugs’ quality control is carried out by the manner known to everyone, in many cases is not controlled at all," asks the site.

Ministry of Healthcare of Azerbaijan reported that Azerbaijan has almost no medicines production, in the same time it did not excluding the possibility of having homemade drugs production in Azerbaijan.