Counterfeit drug menace is eating into the vitals of the African economy. The losses to the states are estimated at several million dollars. That is not all. The health of its citizens is put to great risk affecting a whole generation of people. Rightly so, it is nick named as “business of death”. Yet the fake business is thriving in Africa with political patronage and of course through bribery and other unlawful means. Fake medicines, every year, is taking the lives of several thousand a year. They take various forms and hues, such as substandard drugs, which perhaps wouldn’t pass quality tests due to manufacturing errors or because they have already passed their expiry date. Yet another set of medicines, known as counterfeit drugs, have been deliberately falsified. They could contain entirely different chemicals than the original or might even have no medical properties at all.
The latest studies show that substandard and counterfeit anti-malarial drugs contributed to an additional 72,000 to 267,000 deaths in sub-Saharan Africa annually. If one takes the entire region, it will be quite a tidy number. Counterfeit malaria prophylaxes are very common in the region, so also fake malaria treatment. There are reports about pharmaceutical companies selling sub-standard malaria drugs and making a killing. Administration of such medicines may give the chance to the parasites to become resistant to the medicine.
Malaria spread by certain type of mosquitos still continues to be a major disease burden in African countries. Some countries in the region claim that the fake medicines are available in their country through porous borders. They want resources to beef up the border security. Poor governance also contributes to the spread of fake medicines. Experts opine that the first thing that is needed is the awareness of the general public about the damage that it can cause to the body. Secondly, they should be vigilant to report such cases immediately to the authorities to take immediate action. There are instances even after reporting of the weak drugs, the authorities keep mum because of weak laws and tardy implementation.
The economic loss due to higher incidence of malaria is huge. According to some estimates, it runs to several billions due to direct cost of the medicines and on account of losses due to man days lost when the workers get afflicted by the disease. But there are countries which have overcome these difficulties efficiently, using technology. For instance, a Ghanaian company mPedigree, which operates in several countries around the world, has developed a mobile app which allows consumers to scan the codes on the packets. The process takes only 20 seconds. The machine scans the code engraved in the packet to decipher whether it is fake or genuine. The FDA in Ghana also vigorously operates market surveillance system by visiting medical stores at random to find out fake medicines.
