Egyptian startup Asly fights counterfeit vaccines to save lives and money

When Tamer Ahmed was a child, his three year-old sister died because she had been given a counterfeit vaccine. Years later, still reeling from the loss, he and his partners Mohamed Hal and Mohamed Al Mughni, launched Asly from Egypt in an attempt to ameliorate this region-wide problem.  The startup Asly wants to “offer a radical solution to the problem of fake products, and make the MENA region the [safest] shopping place in the world.”  This goal, without any doubt, is very ambitious, especially given the statistics. Ahmed tells me that around 50% of pharmaceuticals in the Arab world are fake; 40% in Saudi Arabia, more than 50% in Egypt, and between 20 and 25% in the UAE. These frauds not only lead to needless deaths, especially in the case of fake malaria pharmaceuticals, but they also cause financial losses for pharmaceutical companies

http://www.wamda.com/2014/03/could-a-mobile-service-offer-a-solution-to-counterfeit