Medicines are meant to cure diseases and save patients provided that those are pure and genuine. But fake medicines and medicines after expiry dates are not medicines in the truest sense of the term and never cure diseases; those rather create new complications in human bodies or aggravate diseases. Though these so called medicines are not medicines at all, those are available in the market in abundance.

Against the backdrop of abundant availability of fake and substandard medicines, the lead story of yesterday’s Daily Sun brings us another piece of alarming news that a criminal gang is producing a fake vaccine and marketing the same under the label of HPV vaccine that is used to prevent cancer-causing infections and growth of abnormal cells in the cervix that can lead to cancer. According to the report, the gang produces HPV vaccine in the country with an import-banned Hepatitis B jab and is marketing the fake product with the help of three equally criminal health-care providers. What is even more shocking is that they carried out motivational campaigns in different educational institutions and administered the fake vaccines to 6,000 female students during the last two years.

So, the immediate task of the drug administration and law enforcement agencies is to make arrangement for the complete withdrawal of the fake vaccines from the market. They should also gather all necessary information from the culprits arrested and take measures to prevent production and marketing of this and such other fake vaccines and drugs.