A recent British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, Eye Investigation unmasked how an Indian pharmaceutical company, Aveo Pharmaceuticals, allegedly manufactured and exported highly addictive opioids to West Africa thus worsening an already devastating public health crisis.
The report highlights how the Mumbai-based company produced unlicensed pills containing a dangerous combination of tapentadol, a potent opioid, and carisoprodol, a banned muscle relaxant. These drugs, the BBC found, were marketed under various brand names, and were being widely sold on the streets of Ghana, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire, despite their classification as illegal drugs. As part of the investigation, a BBC undercover operative posed as a Nigerian businessman, infiltrated Aveo’s factory, and secretly filmed a company director, Vinod Sharma, openly promoting the dangerous pills. Sharma actually acknowledged the harmful effects of the drugs, saying, “This is very harmful for their health but nowadays, this is business”. The activities violate Indian law, which “prohibits the manufacture and export of unlicensed drugs unless they meet the importing country’s regulations”. The Indian drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, CDSCO, was quoted as saying that the government was committed to preventing illegal pharmaceutical exports and had pledged to take immediate action against companies involved in the malpractice.
It is of note that the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, alongside professional organisations such as the Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria, PCN, have been at war with those involved in the importation, sale and use of fake and banned substances.
As it is these harmful drugs are still being openly sold on the streets of Nigeria and the two other West African countries, which raises the concern on how these drugs beat border checks. In Nigeria, as in Ghana, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire, security agencies are everywhere and are supposed to work closely with the regulatory agencies to ensure that fake, substandard and counterfeit drugs, as well as banned substances, are checked.
However, erring pharmaceutical companies and their local collaborators have been smiling to their banks but killing people and afflicting them with various ailments through fake drugs.
Fake drugs are manufactured and packaged to look like legitimate brand-name medications but often contain little to none of the active ingredients listed on the label. Fake drugs in the illicit supply chain pose a serious potential risk to unsuspecting patients. In some cases, these fake drugs simply do not provide the needed therapeutic value as they may lack the active ingredients.
We acquiesce that consuming counterfeit drugs can have serious consequences for individuals, communities, and overall global public health. According to the World Health Organisation, WHO, one of every 10 medicines fails in low- and middle-income countries because they are substandard or faked. Not only does this erode public trust in healthcare, but it also leads to preventable deaths. It is recorded that between 72,430 and 169,271 children have died of pneumonia each year after taking counterfeit antibiotics. Some counterfeit drugs contain real antibiotics or antivirals but at a much lower dosage than listed on the product label. The poor efficacy of such drugs can give pathogens a chance to mutate and spread, which contributes to the growing public health threat of antimicrobial-resistant infections.
Fake drugs could also contain medicines that are not required in its composition, leading to overdoses and deaths.
It certainly takes two to tango. It is a fact that multinational companies like the ones referenced in the BBC report have ruined so many lives, often irreparably, relying on local accomplices in the sector.
A study by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, reveals that up to 500,000 people die annually from counterfeit drugs in sub-Saharan Africa. “Specifically, 267,000 persons die annually from substandard malaria drugs, while 169,000 deaths are recorded from fake antibiotics used to treat pneumonia in children. Between $12 million and $44.7 million is said to be expended each year treating people who have used counterfeit or substandard malaria drugs”.
Indeed, given that killer drugs are cheaper than real medicines, the foreign companies manufacturing fake drugs leave local pharmaceutical companies in economic distress. It is upsetting that in the current case at least, the security and regulatory agencies were unable to halt this economic sabotage.
We are of the view that given the BBC’s commendable in-depth investigation local regulatory agencies including, NAFDAC, NDLEA among others should wake up to the task with a view to confronting the the toxic monster otherwise referred to as fake and counterfeit drugs before the anomalie and devastates further.
