The five-month investigation called Operation Storm involved almost 200 raids in Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, said Interpol officer Aline Plancon in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, yesterday.
Such a big seizure, valued at US$6.65 million, means that the region's fake drug trade has been disrupted for the second time in three years.
Global sales of fake drugs may reach US$75 billion in 2010, an increase of more than 90 per cent from 2005, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on its website, citing the New York-based Centre for Medicine in the Public Interest.
Under Operation Storm, which ran from April 15 to Sept 15, police seized more than 16 million pills, including fake antibiotics for pneumonia and child-related illnesses, Ms Plancon said.
Asia is the world's biggest producer of all counterfeit products, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report last year.
According to the Washington-based Pharmaceutical Security Institute, 1,047 arrests related to fake drugs were made worldwide last year. About 40 per cent of this took place in Asia.
As much as 30 per cent of all drugs sold in developing nations are fakes, according to the WHO. In developed nations such as the United States, they account for less than 1 per cent.
Of particular concern to health officials are copies of a class of drugs called artemisinins that are the basis of the most effective treatments against malaria. It includes Coartem, a drug made by Novartis AG.
Counterfeit artemisinin-based treatments containing small amounts of the medicine are helping the parasite responsible for malaria evade authentic drugs in patients near Cambodia's border with Thailand, a recent study showed.
As a result, genuine artemisinin-based treatments are starting to fail, leaving millions of people defenceless against a disease that already kills about 2,400 people every day and raising the risk of the resistant parasite spreading.
Operation Storm is a joint effort between Interpol, which is based in Lyon, France, the WHO and the World Customs Organisation.
It is the first time that police, Customs, drug regulators and the health authorities from so many nations have worked together to combat counterfeit medicines, Ms Plancon said.
It followed Operation Jupiter, which led to drug seizures and arrests in China and Myanmar.
That operation, also coordinated by the WHO and Interpol and involving the close cooperation of China, had focused on fakes of the generic medicine artesunate, which is also used for treating malaria.
Operation Jupiter South-east Asia, which ran from 2006 till early this year, was part of a global police initiative that began in 2004.
BLOOMBERG
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