Pharmaceutical News 2.0

DAKAR, 8 July 2009 (IRIN) - Contraband trafficking threatens rule of law, democracy and the health of people throughout West Africa, a region that offers criminals “resources, a strategic location, weak governance and an endless source of foot soldiers who see few viable alternatives to a life in crime,” said UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Costa.

Illegal income from trafficking rivals West African countries’ entire GDPs, fuels conflict and corruption and spawns disease, according to the UN crime agency’s recent trafficking threat assessment.

UNODC measured the flows of cocaine through the region, women from West Africa to Europe, oil from Nigeria, cigarettes from Europe and Asia to West and North Africa, counterfeit medicines from Asia to West Africa, small arms to West Africa, toxic waste from Europe to West Africa and would-be migrants from West Africa to Europe, concluding that smuggled oil generates the most money – more than US$1 billion annually–and is the greatest rule-of-law challenge in the region. Smuggled oil “directly destabilises the most powerful economy in the region [Nigeria], with implications far beyond the Niger Delta,” says the report.

On the corrosive nature of smuggling profits, the report noted: “This money accrues to law-breakers and corrupt officials who may have an interest in maintaining state weakness…Where the rule of law is weak, the lawless prosper, and they further cultivate the disorder that provides their best defence.”

Antonio Mazzitelli, the director of UNODC’s West African office in Senegal, told IRIN illegal money undermines order. “Those with access to funds in West Africa have enormous power to corrupt. It is not alarmist to link trafficking to political instability.”

Read the rest of this article on fake medicine in West Africa.

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New technologies can help African countries identify counterfeit or substandard drugs, says director of Africa Fighting Malaria Roger Bate.

Poor quality medicines are pervasive across Africa. The WHO reports that more than 30 per cent of medicines on sale in many African countries are counterfeit, with some pills containing nothing more than chalk or water.

In last month’s African Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, my research colleagues and I report that 41–47 per cent of antimalarial, antibiotic and antimycobacterial drugs sampled from pharmacies in five African countries and in India failed at least one quality test. [1]

Some drugs fail quality tests because they have been stored and transported inappropriately. Vaccines, antibiotics and antimalarials degrade when exposed to long periods of humidity, temperature variations and sunlight, and anecdotal reports suggest that many developing-world distributors and pharmacies lack adequate storage facilities.

Other substandard drugs come from sloppy manufacturing or outright faking.

Naming and shaming fakers

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reports that between 39 and 81 per cent of all counterfeit drugs seized by European Union officials from 2005–2007 originated in China or India. But a wholesale ban on products from these countries would be counterproductivebecause China and India also produce many good-quality, low-cost generic drugs.

African countries must be able to assess which producers and distributors are to blame and impose selective embargoes on them. Nigeria provides a good model. Nearly a decade ago, Nigerian health authorities indicated that more than 50 per cent of drugs in the country were fake or adulterated. But a rigorous anticounterfeiting campaign — introducing stiffer penalties and banning several dozen Chinese and Indian companies — has reduced this number to 10–16 per cent.

If more African countries can name and shame producers of poor quality and counterfeit drugs, India’s federal government, which is itself trying to combat fake drugs, will have more political ammunition to crack down on bad firms and their state-level sponsors.

To do so, African countries must differentiate between acceptable and counterfeit, or substandard, products — no easy task, given the growing sophistication of counterfeiters. But new technologies can help.

Detection devices

The German Pharma Health Fund’s ‘Minilab’ uses thin layer chromatography, disintegration and simple dye tests to help weed out the worst-quality products. Generally, a product will ‘pass’ the Minilab test if it contains 80 per cent or more of the labelled active ingredient. The system is effective and relatively cheap, costing just under US$10,000 for basic equipment, training and materials. But it does require potable water, reliable electricity and an air-conditioned room for testing. The US government and other donors have helped deploy more than 300 Minilabs in over 70 countries in the past decade. Tanzania has set up over 20 donated Minilabs across the country and health officials say they’re working well in routing out fake drugs.

Read the rest of this article on identifying fake medicine in Africa.

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BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) — China’s State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (SATCM) on Tuesday blacklisted 74 websites for selling fake Chinese herbal medicine.

Names of those sites have been made public on SATCM’s website at www.satcm.gov.cn.

Consumers are warned of buying any type of medicine from organizations such as the International Diabetes Institute of Genetic Engineering (www.010gbw.com), the China Research Center for Chinese Medicine (www.gxykf8.cn) and the China Cardiovascular Research Institute at (www.gxy007.cn).

Drugs sold on those websites claimed to be able to cure high blood pressure, skin diseases, diabetes and tumors.

SATCM has reported the 74 websites to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for further investigation. Those sites could be shut down.

As of now, they are still open.

Only one man, from the Diabetes Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Traditional Medicine website called Xinhua back. However, he hung up when he was asked about medicines for sale.

Yan Jiangying, spokeswoman with the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), said only those sites with the SFDA license of Internet medicine business can sell over-the-counter (OTC) drugs to individuals.

“So far, only ten websites across China have been issued with the license,” she said.

Read the rest of this article on fake medicine in China.

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