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

Also, according to Ahmed, counterfeiting leads to increased regional unemployment: “Due to counterfeiting, companies can’t employ and expand in the region.” He says this has lead to a significant “increase of the unemployment problem.”

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Egyptian startup Asly fights counterfeit vaccines to save lives and money