Posted by Associated Press on
Nigeria has banned the import of pharmaceuticals produced by 30 Asian companies, including 24 Indian, alleging the firms sent counterfeit and substandard drugs to Africa's most-populous nation, officials said on Friday.
Nigeria has banned the import of pharmaceuticals produced by 30 Asian companies, including 24 Indian, alleging the firms sent counterfeit and substandard drugs to Africa's most-populous nation, officials said on Friday.
Twenty-four Indian, five Chinese and one Pakistani company are on the blacklist, said Dora Akunyili, head of Nigeria's food and drug regulation agency.
"We traced quite a number of fake drugs circulating in this country to these companies, so we decided to bar them from exporting drugs to us," Akunyili said.
Officials at the embassies of India, China and Pakistan were not immediately available for comment.
In the past four years, the agency seized fake and substandard drugs worth USD60 million at retail prices during 780 raids across the country. Convictions have been secured for 38 counterfeit drug dealers while more than 40 additional cases are pending in the courts, she said.
The efforts have resulted in a sharp drop in the percentage of fake drugs from 68 per cent of all pharmaceuticals in circulation in Nigeria in 2002, to less than 10 percent in 2005, the agency said.
Only 30 percent of Nigeria's drugs sold in Nigeria are produced locally, with the rest imported.