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You may know someone who took Viagra to little avail, having ordered it online from one of those cryptic sources at simply an unbeatable price. But chances are much smaller that you know someone who took malaria drugs and died of malaria.

The problem all around: counterfeit drugs. Scammers have created a $50 billion industry where lookalikes of popular drugs have little or no actual medicine.

Public health in high-income countries is so advanced that it can look beyond life-threatening diseases. But low-income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are still grappling with epidemics such as malaria and AIDS.

On top of this, the World Health Organization claims that up to 50 percent of prescription drugs in Africa and Asia do little or nothing because they are fake. This has cost pharmaceutical companies hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue and overall millions of lives.

Taylor Thompson, 23, has spent the past two years trying to solve the problem of counterfeit drugs, particularly in developing countries.

A Greensboro native and Page High School graduate, Thompson is co-founder of PharmaSecure, a company that enables consumers to authenticate their drugs with cell phones.

Thompson's business threatens a multibillion-dollar black market industry, and for his safety some specifics must be omitted. But right now his focus is in Africa, where he is working on two pilot projects.

"Eventually, I would like to graduate college," Thompson joked. Technically, he is a junior at Dartmouth College but has taken several years off for PharmaSecure. But Thompson has far more professional experience than most college graduates, traveling every few weeks for business. An "itinerant college dropout on a mission to change the world," he spends most of his time abroad but returns to Greensboro frequently. His operating base changes often.

For work, Thompson and partner Nathan Sigworth have been awarded the Echoing Green Fellowship, which plants $90,000 of seed money into high-impact social enterprises. They have also been chosen as the youngest Pop!Tech Fellows and were recently featured on Wired magazine's Pop!Tech blog, which recognizes high-potential leaders as tomorrow's world-changers.

As a sophomore at Page, Thompson took a trip through Young Life to Ethiopia. "That's when I first took a look at the world beyond myself," he said. "Since then, I've sought to be involved with the poor." He remains grateful to his church for supporting that trip.

Thompson also knows personally the power of medicine. On his first trip to Rwanda as a freshman at Dartmouth he contracted malaria and was quickly treated. But many of his Rwandan friends remain at risk of contracting malaria and dying of counterfeit treatment.

When a fellow Dartmouth student proposed that technology could solve this problem, Thompson had to get involved. But a good heart is not always enough.

If you've ever had the opportunity to buy hand-made Rwandan greeting cards from a sheepish salesman, you probably witnessed Thompson's first attempt at social enterprise.

When he first visited Rwanda he bought $2,000 of greeting cards made by child-headed households to sell in the States. "I just didn't know how to make a good idea successful," he explained. "It also took more time than I had." The cards sat under his bed for two years.

Things are looking better for Thompson and Sigworth since they started. The cards are sold. Also, with guidance from former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Dartmouth alumni, he and Sigworth are well on their way to an investment goal of $1 million for the first phases of market testing.

But Thompson also realizes that a home like Greensboro is paramount. "When I get discouraged, my family and friends act as an anchor and offer invaluable support. I can do this because I have them to come back to."

If the pilot phases are successful, PharmaSecure will focus on decreasing counterfeits in poor countries. "This is a new problem and nobody knows exactly how big it is or how long it will take to solve." Thompson is committed to seeing deaths from counterfeit anti-malarials reduced by 50 percent.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs has found malaria creates an enormous burden for poor countries.

Since the WHO estimates 20 percent of deaths from malaria are due to counterfeit medicine, PharmaSecure could become a key ingredient in many countries' development.

"As people die from this shameful enterprise, it crushes hopes," said Thompson.

Patrick Lineberry is a writer in Greensboro. He has lived in Ethiopia and writes about Africa and economics. He can be reached at patrick.lineberry@gmail.com.