What's at stake in the fake?

Indian pharmaceuticals, African markets and global health


Dr René Gerrets | People at Fake Drugs Project

Dr René Gerrets

Principal Investigator
University of Amsterdam and AIGHD

René Gerrets, a social anthropologist with prior experience in the health sciences, is co-investigator on the What’s at Stake in the Fake project. Based at the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development and the University of Amsterdam, his ethnographic research explores the social dynamics of language relating to ‘fakery,’ medicines and institutions in Tanzania. His research will track and examine how ‘pharma fake talk’ informs and animates actors and institutions along various points of drug supply chains, including the sense-making, suspicions and contestations this ‘idiom’ illuminates. Of particular interest is the historically charged figure of the ‘Indian’ in these processes as pharmaceuticals hailing from India have come to dominate the market for imported medicines.

Email: r.p.m.gerrets@uva.nl