Wellness Update: Africa: Counterfeit Drugs: Africa’s silent public health crisis ::: Breaking News | News in Ghana | features

Ghana News :Counterfeit Drugs: Africa’s silent public health crisis ::: Breaking News | News in Ghana | features: "The discussion’s moderator Bright Simons called fake drugs “the most systemic threat to healthcare in Africa”. Mr. Simons is the founder of mPedigree (www.mPedigree.Net), an innovative mobile phone-based system, which enables consumers through instant messaging to check the authenticity of their medications against a central database.

This kind of consumer empowered identification capacity is increasingly important as drugs are being manufactured by increasingly sophisticated counterfeiters who are able to reproduce medications, packaging and even security holograms that are indistinguishable to the consumer from the authentic products.

At the country level, Nigeria has been a pioneer in Africa in fighting counterfeits. According to a 2006 study, Nigeria was able to cut the proportion of fake drugs in the Nigerian market, from 48% in 2004 to 16.7%, at least over the period under observation."