The magnitude of fake drugs in circulation has reached an exponential high level. Fake or counterfeit drugs, no doubt is now a lucrative business embraced by some at the detriment of lives of the ever-growing population.
Study has shown that about a third of anti-malarial drugs sold in sub-Saharan Africa countries are fake. This poses a great threat to lives and constitutes serious public health challenge. Most of the fake drugs find their way to the open street markets, clinics, pharmacy stores and online stores via unregulated websites.
By definition, a fake drug is any substance packaged in a deceptive and appealing manner in such a way to mimic the genuine drugs. Significant proportion of fake drugs in circulation lack active ingredients while some contain little or high active ingredients in varying concentration.
Peculiar features of Nigeria’s fake drug peddlers
Most fake drug dealers are often in transit, moving from one place to another just to escape being caught by drug regulatory agency. Drug dealers keep changing strategies in order to stay in the business of fake drug marketing.
One of the notable tricks of fake drug dealers is that they make their products to always resemble the original drug in form, labeling and packaging. They as well make them look attractive, visually appealing and even using strong convincing and persuasive evidence to get the attention of the people.
Other strategy adopted by fake drug dealers is selling their fake drug products at much cheaper prices, usually way below the original price of the product.
More so, fake drug dealers also connive with their collaborative network agents who disguise themselves and pretend to have used the products on previous occasion just to get the attention of the people to buy their fake products.
Problems Associated with the Use of Fake Drugs
The use of fake drugs in treatment is associated with myriad of health problems. Some of the identified problems or side effects of fake drugs are drug resistance, treatment failure, poisoning and untreated diseases which is detrimental to the health of the patients. In many occasions, some drugs may be produced in unhygienic conditions and may contain high level of microbes and dangerous chemicals that could be life-threatening producing effects that is similar to the lethal injections that killed severally Ghanaians recently.
Read more: 4 dead in Ghana after receiving contaminated penicillin injection
Solution in Place to Curb the Activities of Fake Drug Dealers
The advent and introduction of cutting-edge technologies has helped in no small measure to curb the activities of fake drug dealers. Take for instance, the introduction of mpedigree technology.
This technology has helped drug manufacturers and regulators to monitor the entire supply chain. It also help regulators to pinpoint and detect fraud practices.
Furthermore, customers can verify the originality of a drug by sending a unique code on the drug pack (printed barcode) to mpedigree and find out if the product is genuine.
More so, the setting up of Center for Pharmaceutical Advancement and Training (CePAT) in Ghana, by United States Pharmacopeia Convention (USP) has helped to train African professionals on modern techniques in the screening and detecting of substandard and fake drugs.
Other control methods include the whistle blowing mechanism recently introduced by NAFDAC. This method seeks to encourage the populace to alert the agency of any suspected fake drug vendors or dealers within and outside their environs.
Going forward
Experts believe that NAFDAC and other agencies should strengthen their check and surveillance mechanisms at the various ports in the country in order to ensure that fake drugs do not find their way to the Nigerian market.
More so, there is urgent need to strengthen and focus more on Nigeria’s drug anti-counterfeits laws, as the current punishment prescribed by the law against drug counterfeit is largely seen as weak.
Stakeholders believe that the drug anti-counterfeit laws should be further strengthened and stiffer punishment should be given to fake drug dealers to serve as deterrent for others.