Nigerians Cautioned Against Fake, Counterfeit Drugs

Fake and counterfeit medicines have remained a public health concern.

According to the World Health Organisation, WHO, one in ten drugs sold in Africa is falsified or substandard.

These drugs according to WHO, include the ones that can kill or maim.

Findings show that some of these medicines contain little or no active ingredients thus prolonging illness.

In Nigeria, in 2018 alone, data from the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, reveals that the agency destroyed fake foods and drugs worth four-point-seven billion naira in four exercises in Abuja, Shagamu, Ogun, Kaduna and Gombe states.

Despite these efforts, counterfeiting has continued unabated.

Health watchers are worried that the country is losing the milestones widely attained in safe medicines when it achieved forty percent reduction in counterfeit medicines in 2001 to one-six-point-seven percent in 2005 in a survey conducted by NAFDAC and WHO.

Reports said that the failure of the Federal Government to implement the National Drug Distribution Policy four years after it was put in place remains a major contributor to why fake drugs still thrive in Nigeria.

The immediate past President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, PSN, and the Chairman, Safe Medicines Foundation, Mr Ahmed Yakasai, said in the last few years, findings show an upsurge in fake drugs which has proven to be a major contributor to high death rates.

He said the problem of fake drug proliferation has affected the credibility of the healthcare system.

Recently the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria asked the federal government to implement the National drug policy now.
Experts say it is imperative to intensify efforts in fake drug eradication.

To them, government delay in the implementation of the National Drug Distribution Policy remains a major factor in curbing the menace of fake drugs.

A fake drug or counterfeit medicine is a medication or pharmaceutical product, which is produced and sold with the intent to deceptively represent its origin, authenticity or effectiveness.