Ending the snaky fake drugs tale (2)

Having mentioned the case with the drugs from China, I think it is worthy of emphasis that I was really at the centre of issues regarding an inspection agent from China. I was the consultant who traversed the length and breadth of the east coast of China from the north to the south; from Tianjin, through Beinjing, Qindao, Shanghai, down to Guangzhou and Kumming; the latter in the southern interior, looking for a worthy agent. This was in 2008. How the present agent emerged soon after that, in spite of the questionable credentials of the proprietor of the agent firm, posts more questions than answers. As long as this agent remains in the scheme of things, so long will drugs from China remain questionable.

I am not saying that only China is complicit in the menace of imported fake drugs. India too is, being arguably the country with single largest volume of imports into Nigeria. As mentioned earlier, in 2005 NAFDAC banned some firms – 19 actually – from manufacturing for Nigerian importers. These firms where majorly in China and India. However India’s inspection system is far saner than what we now have in China.

But the evil of fake drugs is not only associated with imported drugs. Local manufactures too are sometimes complicit. Late last year NAFDAC announced the capture of a certain quack that was manufacturing and selling a weird concoction of codeine-containing cough mixture which he labeled as Tutolin. This is in the wake of the My Pikin saga which saw the perpetrators of the killer baby teething powder.

And the Tutolin and My Pikin tragedies are not the only celebrated cases of locally manufactured counterfeit drugs. In 1989, it was reported that a number of innocent children died from ingesting poorly concocted chloroquine syrup. This happened in the respected University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu. The following year saw the infamous “paracetamol syrup disaster” which claimed the lives of 109 children in Jos and Ibadan after consuming paracetamol syrup produced with toxic ethylene glycol solvent instead of propylene glycol.

The origin of fake meningitis vaccines that ravaged some West African countries particularly Niger in 1995 and 1996 was traced to Nigeria. It could be recalled that the incident was the single immediate factor which resulted in the general banning of drugs from Nigeria by most West African countries beginning from 1996. It took a reinvigorated NAFDAC under the stewardship of Dr. Dora Akunyili to restore hope and confidence in Nigerian drugs.

It seems that the attraction of some unscrupulous Nigerians to billion-naira Nigerian fake drugs market began with the free-for-all access to the drug industry of lay men from the beginning. We can recall the certain class of “pharmacy practitioners” known as Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors (PPMV’s); men and women whose only credential was that they were seen as “good people” by the authorities who licensed them to deal on certain categories of medicines. This was after the departure of the British Crown Agents from the scene in the early sixties.

Although the law permitting PPMV’s to deal on medicines specified the class of drugs; certainly not ethical drugs, they had gone beyond their boundary to deal on all kinds of drugs. They were even seen to deal on infusions and sometimes administering the infusions themselves. And the fact that there was virtually no control of any sort, the field was wide open.  As it turned out over time persons without the basic knowledge of the ethics of drug administration were exposed to the desperation of Nigerians for affordable drugs. So it was now a matter of personal judgment of what is right and what is wrong. Matters were not helped by the fact that being that these people had no medical training many of them were oblivious of the gravity of the offence of faking drugs especially in terms of damage to human lives. There is no doubt however that drug faking is limited to “quacks”, as some trained persons are innately criminals.

That said, dealing with the menace of fake drugs requires both political and human will. All sorts of surveillance devices, such as the already mentioned TRUSCAN, the newly introduced minilabs for quick checks and the extensive enlightenment campaign NAFDAC has embarked on since 2001, should have greatly stemmed the tide. What may be needed to inflict a deeper bite are more stringent laws both against fakers and against persons playing in unauthorized fields including dispensing ethical drugs to unauthorized persons. Finally, however the present agent in China emerged in 2009 is also suggestive that there is more to the fake drugs problem than meets the eye.

Chuba Keshi