13 November 2012 Last updated at 20:03 ET By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online

A global treaty to crack down on the deadly trade of fake medicines is urgently needed, say experts.

Currently, there are more sanctions around the use of illegal tobacco than counterfeit drugs.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, experts urge the World Health Organization to set up a framework akin to its one tobacco control to safeguard the public.

WHO says more than one in every 10 drug products in poorer nations are fake.

A third of malaria drugs are counterfeit, research suggests.

In richer countries, medicine safety is better, but substandard and falsified drugs still cause thousands of adverse reactions and some deaths.

Recently, in the US, contaminated drug supplies caused an outbreak of meningitis that has so far killed 16 people.

Amir Attaran and colleagues from the World Federation of Public Health Associations, International Pharmaceutical Federation and the International Council of Nurses, say while governments and drug companies alike deplore unsafe medicines, it is difficult to achieve agreement on action because discussions too often trespass into conflict-prone areas such as pharmaceutical pricing or intellectual property rights.

In Canada we have seen a fake version of the heart drug Avastin come into the country that contains no active drug, just starch and nail polish remover

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Call for fake medicine crackdown