The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is working on a project to develop a handheld screening device that will be used to detect counterfeit malaria pills.
Health officials hope to curtail the counterfeit drug trade occurring worldwide with the new device that will be made available in Africa.
U.S. partners in Ghana are slated to start using 10 of the handheld devices, called CD-3, to detect counterfeit or diluted malaria pills, according to an FDA statement released Wednesday.
Malaria, a disease originating from mosquitoes, results in more than 660,000 deaths each year, with more than 90 percent occurring in Africa.
The disease causes fever, chills and flu-like symptoms.
But more than a third of medications used to treat malaria in Africa and Asia are either counterfeit or altered in some way, according to one study released last year.
And the fake drug trade is creating a roadblock in the fight against the disease, an occurrence that could ultimately affect the U.S.
"If anti-malaria drug resistance develops in Ghana and other regions it impacts us because it means that strains of malaria are circulating and anyone can be exposed to them when they're traveling, or when people who are infected come into this country," said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.
But if the new device proves successful in Ghana, it has the potential to cut down on the global counterfeit drug trade substantially.
"We live in a world where the marketplace is increasingly global, where the supply chain of drugs is increasingly vulnerable and we are seeing many more problems with substandard and counterfeit drug around the world," Hamburg said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"Unfortunately developing economies are the most burdened by this problem, but we've had serious threats to health in this country as well."
Each device costs about $1,000---according to FDA officials who added that costs are expected to decrease as they become mass-produced.
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