Omicron Medicine, a German pharmaceutical company, has come under fire for illegally selling prescription testosterone products in South Africa. In addition to South African black-market sales, up to 2 million doses have been illegally shipped into South Africa, where the company is expecting sales to double by 2020.
The product has been blamed for a recent surge in female infertility cases in South Africa, where one out of three women ages 16–44 have had trouble conceiving. Apart from the illegal market, hundreds of thousands of women buy new treatments every year from clinical trials. And there’s another factor: Not all cases of female infertility turn out to be due to male factors. As Dr. David Marvin, a South African obstetrician and gynaecologist, said, “It’s purely speculative because these are some very sensitive areas, and how something sexual could be to blame is not really straightforward.”