Posted by Mohammed S. Shehu & Hussain J. Ibrahim, Kaduna on
Despite 13,867 raids, 56 court cases, and forty five convictions recorded by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control.....
Despite 13,867 raids, 56 court cases, and forty five convictions recorded by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) between 2001 and 2005 and other control measures adopted by sister regulatory agencies like the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Consumers Protection Council (CPC), Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) and the Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria (PCN), the fake product industry continues boom.
Indeed, it may not be an exaggeration to say that more counterfeit drugs and sub standard products are in circulation than the genuine or original ones. While the government is taking measures to tackle the problem, dealers of such products are also adopting several antics to either evade arrest or compromise with the regulators. When that fails, they often resort to physical attack, intimidation and blackmail. Against this background, Weekly Trust takes a look at the fake products market where these deadly and sub standard produc ts are displayed for the innocent consumers and the activities of regulatory authorities.
The social problem posed by hard drugs like cocaine and heroin cannot be compared with the damage done by fake drugs because illicit drugs are taken out of choice , and by those that can afford them, but fake drugs are taken by all and anybody can be a victim
Prof. Dora Akunyili is one of those Nigerians that had tasted the agony of losing loved ones through the use of fake drugs and other expired, toxic consumable items that litter the Nigerian markets. In 1988, Akunyili lost her sister, a diabetic patient following the administration of fake insulin on her. Her fight against fake drugs nearly cause the NAFDAC boss her life in 2002 when suspected assassins opened fire on her car. She escaped death by the whiskers.
Her experience is one shared by millions of Nigerians who are being killed or deformed because of fake drugs.
In 1990, more than 100 children died from a painkiller that had been made with toxic ethylene glycol. In 1996, eleven Nigerian children died and many were deformed following an uncertified clinical trial of trovafloxacine (Trovan) by Pfizer in Kano during a triple epidemic of measles, cholera and celebro-spinal meningitis. In 2003, phoney adrenaline led to the deaths of three children undergoing surgery in the town of Enugu.
These are few out of many innocent Nigerians who die daily due to fake and counterfeit products as well as other toxic items.
However, the fight against the fake product industry is proving to be difficult. The past few weeks have been turbulent for NAFDAC. In what looked like a reversal of the agency's sustained fight against the manufacture and sales of fake drugs, disgruntled traders of the Onitsha market are threatening to flood the market with fake drugs. NAFDAC reacted by issuing an ultimatum to the drug marketers to open their stalls for inspection or risk the total closure of the market for good.
This is coming at the heels of staggering statistics made available to Weekly Trust which revealed that over 80 percent of the cases of kidney failure in the country are linked to the intake of fake drugs.
A medical practitioner with the Wuse hospital who didn't want his name in print told Weekly Trust that the growing cases of drug resistance in the country might not be unconnected with the prevalence of fake drugs.
His said: "Even the doctors sometimes find it very difficult to identify fake drug because of the sophistication in the faking business".
The NAFDAC boss herself and other agencies confirmed in an interview that the problem is bigger than expected. Akunyili said adulteration includes drugs with no active ingredients and made of compressed chalk, drugs with less active ingredients, different drugs with different label, cloning of marketable drugs, adulteration of syrups and extending the life span of drugs beyond the expired date, faking of reputable manufacturers' names, drugs without manufacturers' name, and other drugs not certified drugs.
Weekly Trust investigation revealed that it is not only drugs that are subject to the adulteration strategy. Other regulated products include foods, cosmetics, medical devices, chemicals/detergents, packaged water, building materials and electrical appliances, motor parts, lubricants(sale of base oil as lubricants), textile and leather works, money and intellectual properties are all victims of the faking strategy.
As the fight is on, the regulators are also facing series of attacks from the dealers anytime they are on raid mission to clean the markets of these sub standard products. Two weeks ago, the officials of the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) were attacked by traders of the Alaba International Market, Lagos while attempting to confiscate pirated CDs, VCDs and DVDs from them. The attack came at the heels of various attacks on NAFDAC officials. But the cheery news is that the regulators are not relenting.
Just last year, the NCC uncovered a multi-billion naira illegal compact disc replicating plant, Kwangwan Nigeria limited for illegal mass production of cds.
Information made available by the NCC showed that nine out of every ten CDs, VCDs, DVDs software, books and other copyright work is pirated and that Nigeria is losing more than N100 million to piracy.
"Indeed piracy has grown into a systematically organised industry, claiming more than 90 percent of the market share. Over 70 percent of the software in use is pirated and over 80 percent of DVDs and cassettes in the music and movie industry are pirated". The information said.
Market surveys conducted around Abuja show even the traders of these products sometimes find it difficult to differentiate the good ones from the bad ones.
Mallam Isa Umar, a medicine vendor who has been trading in drugs told Weekly Trust that there are only two ways he can identify fake drugs and these are through the price of the products and absence of NAFDAC registration label.
"Even from the price of a drug, you will be able to know that the drug is not good and secondly by not having NAFDAC's tag". To him these are the only two ways to identify fake drugs.
Another trader, Malam Isa Mai Yadi said that the problem is caused by greed of some of the dealers who are interested in profit making rather than the quality of the products they sell.
"For some of our people, when they realise there is a popular demand on a particular product, the dealers will take the same product to countries like India, Japan, Korea and Malaysia and request for the same product to be manufactured with a very low material and import it into the country."
He added: "because our people want cheap things they rush for the cheaper ones without minding the quality".
But to Prof. Akunyili the scourge of fake products, particularly drugs is nothing short of terrorism.
"Counterfeiting of medicines is the greatest evil of our time. It is also a form of terrorism against public health, as well as an act of economic sabotage. The evil of fake drugs is worse than the combined scourge of malaria, HIV/AIDS and armed robbery. This she said is because malaria can be prevented, HIV/ AIDS can be avoided and armed robbery may kill a few at a time, but counterfeit /fake drugs kill en-mass."
She added that the social problem posed by fake hard drugs like cocaine and heroin cannot be compared with the damage done by fake drugs because illicit drugs are taken out of choice , and by those that can afford them, but fake drugs are taken by all and anybody can be a victim.
"Fake drugs embarrass our health care providers and erode the confidence of the public on the healthcare delivery system. This development has led to treatment failures, organ dysfunction/damage, worsening of chronic disease condition s and the death of many Nigerians. The situation became so bad to the extent that even when patients are treated with genuine antibiotics, they no longer respond positively due to resistance induced by previous intake of fake/counterfeit antibiotics.
Even multinational corporations in the country are involved in the importation of these deadly products to the detriment of Nigerians. The recent sealing of Julius Berger clinic in Abuja was a good example.
The raid which followed a report filed by the father of a patient later led to a full scale investigation in the course of which, NAFDAC officials uncovered more fake drugs in one section of the clinic reserved for Nigerian workers of the company while the genuine ones at the other side of the clinic were reserved for the expatriates.
Stressing the economic implication of having sub standard products in circulation, the director general of SON, Dr J. N Akanya stated that even the deregulation policy of the government might not be effective if the tenets of standardisation are not adhered to.
"Embarking on the deregulation of the economy without imbibing the tenets of standardisation, usually results into economic stagnation due to proliferation of goods without added value," he said.
Narrating the successes recorded in the course of fighting the scourge, the NAFDAC boss said between April 2001 and January 2006, the agency has carried out ninety destruction exercises of counterfeit and substandard products valued at over eight billion. Over 1100 containers of regulated products were placed on hold at the Port Harcourt and Lagos ports, and most of the owners have absconded. From 2002 to July 2004 a total of 780 raids were carried out on distribution outlets of fake drugs.
Another product that has proven to be deadlier is the use of substandard tyres.
According to the SON boss, the need for tyres to be subjected to control cannot be over emphasised because according to him, the tyre interacts with a complex environment where surface regulation and friction cause further variation in result.
He said: "every control function the driver of a vehicle has is eventually created through the tyres.
He also added: that "the annual international Red Cross reports predict that road accidents will kill or maim more people than war, tuberculosis or HIV by the year 2020".
Pharm. Ahmed T Mora, had in a paper he presented recently to stakeholders on combating counterfeit/fake drugs in West Africa, attributed the problem on the chaotic drug distribution channels in the West African sub-region, particularly Nigeria."
In the paper made available to Weekly Trust, he said the reason why fake drugs is prevalent in Nigeria was because the country has a poor populace and badly organised healthcare delivery system and multi-national pharmaceutical companies have become mere marketing outlets rather than genuine manufacturers.