Common scams begging for medicine to sick family members · Begging for medicine to sick family members in Common scams
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Begging for medicine to sick family members in Common scams
Begging for medicine to sick family members in Common scams
This scam is practiced in parts of Africa, where it's well known that tourists travel with their own medicine such as penicillin or anti-malarial drugs. Beggars will approach on the street, telling a sad tale about their little daughter or son who is dying with malaria or some other disease. They will then ask you if they can have your medicine to save them. The sobbing story makes it difficult to refuse the request and they may accuse you for everything from racism to willingly letting an innocent child die. As soon as they receive your medications they will run away, presumably to save their daughter but in reality running to the local pharmacy to sell your medications. Expensive drugs such as Malarone may fetch up to $10 US per tablet.
This scam places a lot of emotional stress on the victims, but remember that if a child really was sick, it's highly unlikely that the father would be running around in the streets begging tourists for medicine. The child would have been brought to the local dispensary, and, if there really was a scarcity in drugs, you would probably be approached in quite a different manner. Also, remember that giving up hard-to replace prescription drugs might put yourself at risk if you were to contract any illness yourself. The cure is to not get soft-hearted so simply ignore the person and walk away.
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Common scams Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.