Illegal medicines might be stealing their way onto the South African market while health and Medicines Control Council (MCC) officials try to fast-track monitoring the safety and efficacy of these drugs.
The MCC estimated about 30,000 medicines were registered with it, of which only a few were natural or homeopathic remedies, also known as complementary medicines. Unregistered products claiming to cure HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and various forms of cancer were readily obtained from street vendors, traditional healers and many other outlets.
Doctor Francois Venter, an HIV specialist with the University of Witwatersrand's Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit, based in Johannesburg, said the illegal drug boom had much to do with money-making and little to do with public welfare.
"It is especially worrying when this greed impacts on the national efforts to address the growing AIDS pandemic. If it's complementary medicines today, it could easily be fake antiretroviral (ARV) drugs tomorrow," he told PlusNews.
Venter said the consequences could be unimaginable for scores of people using life-prolonging ARVs, which "are usually taken in combinations of three pills per day, each tackling a different and vital aspect of HIV infection, but if one of those pills were to be replaced by an illegal replica, the patient stands the risk of developing resistance to the entire regimen of drugs and even succumbing to an AIDS-related illness."
He urged the government and MCC to quickly take the necessary steps to clamp down on "charlatans who have a total disregard for human life".
The MCC has set up a complementary medicines committee, which is in the process of drafting regulations to help the government speed up implementation of the existing Medicines and Related Substances Control Act, which governs the manufacture, distribution, sale and marketing of all medicines, complementary or otherwise.
MCC chairman Prof Peter Eagles said the council's recommendations would be put forward to the health minister by the end of this year, "but until that time, it is in the best interest of the public that they avoid back-door remedies and rather seek the advice of a registered pharmacist or medical doctor when worried about what medicines would work best for them."
The local AIDS lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), said they had little confidence in the "pointless deliberations of the government and MCC".
TAC spokesman Nathan Geffen told PlusNews, "The Act is quite clear as it stands, but has not been implemented due to the atmosphere of confusion created by Health Minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang around the issue of traditional medicines versus scientifically proven ones."
Tshabalala-Msimang has drawn international criticism for supporting the views of well-known AIDS dissidents, and her controversial promotion of garlic, beetroot and the African potato as effective means of treating HIV/AIDS.