- Title: GHANA: Ghanaian innovator takes on counterfeit drug trade with a drug app
- Date: 15th August 2012
- Summary: ACCRA, GHANA (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) BRIGHT SIMONS, PRESIDENT MPEDIGREE SAYING: "The biggest challenge is how we align with the governments existing mandates to make this service more widely available. The next job is going to be to get the pharmaceutical companies to undertake those processes that they need to undertake for the platform to integrate into their manufacturing systems, they have to undertake a number of exercises for the integration of the service into their manufacturing systems."
- Embargoed: 30th August 2012 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Nigeria
- Country: Nigeria
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
- Reuters ID: LVA249CWGQRBYYVQAQPVH1JOWSPC
- Story Text: The World Health Organisation estimates that 10 percent of prescription drugs available in pharmacies and hospitals around the world, are counterfeit.
In Africa, anywhere between 30 and 50 percent of prescribed drugs are fake, undermining the treatment of killer diseases like Malaria.
But as a buyer, how would you know what is authentic and what is not? Ghanaian innovator Bright Simons is trying to curb the rampant trade of counterfeit prescription and over-the-counter drugs through a free text-messaging service known as mPedigree, which helps consumers verify the authenticity of the drugs they are buying against a central database.
Drugs protected through mPedigree carry a short code that is revealed through scratching an area of the packaging. Users send this unique ID via free Short Message Service (SMS) and immediately get a message to verify the drug's authenticity.
"SMS, it goes to a hotline, it is a four digits number, so its easy to memorize, 1393, its just like a 911 or 999, you get a response in a few seconds confirming that the medicine you are about to receive is the genuine medicine," Simons said in an interview.
Ghana has 17 million mobile phone subscribers. Simons says mPedigree empowers patients of all classes to get valuable healthcare and saves lives. Counterfeit drugs are linked to at least 700,000 deaths every year globally, according to health studies.
The mPedigree platform is already operational in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria and tests are being conducted in Uganda, Tanzania, and South Africa as well as India and Bangladesh.
"With this new system of authenticating the safety and originality of drugs, you are sure what you are buying, so would not have reported cases of people suffering because they took in counterfeit drugs, so I'm sure what I'm buying, having test I know I am safe with this drug," said Redeemer Hatsu, an mPedigree user.
Experts say that the lack of proper monitoring of imported drugs in most parts of Africa is allowing counterfeit criminals to move in and cash in on a continent battling with various diseases and poverty.
A recent study by global health scientists showed that low-quality and fake anti-malarial drugs flooding markets in Asia and Africa are driving resistance and threatening gains made against the disease in the last decade.
The study found around 36 percent of anti-malarial drugs analyzed in southeast Asia were fake, while a third of samples in sub-Saharan Africa failed chemical testing because they contained either too much or not enough active ingredient.
More than 3 billion people worldwide are at risk of malaria, a mosquito-borne parasitic disease which kills around 650,000 people a year, most of them babies and children in Africa.
Dr. Alex Dodoo heads the Centre for Tropical Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Ghana Medical School. He says the problem of counterfeit drugs is global but in developing countries it is getting worse because it is not being documented.
"The challenge is knowing the size of the problem, we know there is a problem, when studies have been conducted you can get up to 40 percent of all medicine for malaria being not of the expected standard or being counterfeited or being fake. For some conditions or anti-malarials or antibiotics, the problem is worst. So one of our biggest challenge is to actually quantify the size of the problem and then begin to deal with it, but there is a problem, the problem is not getting better its getting worse," he said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that less than 1 percent of medicines available in developed countries are likely to be counterfeit.
As well as putting patients at risk, counterfeit drugs are a constant bane for companies like GlaxoSmithkline, Sanofi and other international drugmakers.
mPedigree is partnering with key stakeholders in the pharmaceutical industry, including drug companies and drug regulatory agencies, to try and spread the impact of the authentication system and reach more people.
"The biggest challenge is how we align with the governments existing mandates to make this service more widely available. The next job is going to be to get the pharmaceutical companies to undertake those processes that they need to undertake for the platform to integrate into their manufacturing systems, they have to undertake a number of exercises for the integration of the service into their manufacturing systems," said Simons.
Simons has received support from the World Economic Forum and TED (Technology, Entertainment an Design), a global forum for innovative ideas and received several awards for this work against the counterfeit drugs trade. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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