Adebayo nearly died when he was given fake medicine as a child.

Since then, he's tried to make sure that doesn't happen to others.

He's invented a simple device to spot fake drugs.

It gave me a mission. Deciding  I was going to be a pharmacist.

Deciding I was going to build something

to make sure that nobody else  has to go through my trauma.

People Fixing the World. Spotting fake drugs.

A consignment of illegal medicines is seized by customs.

It's a global trade worth $200 billion

which leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year.

In Africa, specifically, it's very acute.

In many countries between 30 to  50% of the medicine supply chain

is actually counterfeit and  substandard to an extent.

Adebayo was 15 when he was given fake drugs for a lung condition.

I had taken a dose that night. And  I didn't wake up the next morning.

I was in intensive care for over three weeks.

I spent another, close to two  or three months recovering.

And I still live with some  of the healthcare condition

from almost losing my life from  something as trivial as a medicine.

After that experience, he decided he was going to study pharmacy.

So I was very angry and I  really wanted to make a change.

And that anger is what turned into a  sense of purpose and mission for me

that has kept me focused  over the last 15-plus years.

Now he's designed this portable scanner that tests if a drug is real.

It uses light to analyse each pill's unique ingredients.

The process is called spectrophotometry.

Connect it to the app and tell it what the drug is supposed to be

and in a few seconds it'll tell you if it matches.

And the test result is out. It's a match.

The AI has confirmed that it is M&B paracetemol.

It can also identify some unknown pills and liquids.

from its database of over 200 drugs.

At $100 a month though it's mainly aimed at professionals.

But Adebayo thinks it could help in places like this market.

It makes me sad that we have medicines being stored improperly

and handled not in the right manner.

Yeh. There's lots of medicines for example.

People get medicines from markets because they can be cheaper.

Sometimes you end up with bad medicines.

Sometimes you end up with falsified medicines.

You can be lucky today and unlucky tomorrow.

And I was the unlucky one.  I ended up with something

that probably came from somewhere like here

that almost killed me.

Other solutions validate medicines by using packaging or barcodes.

Adebayo hopes his solution can improve the whole supply chain.

My hope is that across Africa

more and more hospitals, pharmacies,  pharmaceutical wholesalers

will be able to authenticate  the quality of their medicines.

So that only the highest quality  medicines eventually end up

in the hands of patients no matter where they are.