NIGERIA-HEALTH: Bogus Drugs — A National Headache

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Dec 5 1996 (IPS) - Two weeks into taking an antimalarial drug prescribed by his doctor in August, civil servant Olu Bello lost consciousness and had to be rushed to hospital.

It took another course of drugs and one month in hospital before he was could return home. The doctor told him the Chloroquine he had earlier bought from a drugstore was fake.

While Bello survived, thousands of other Nigerians have paid with their lives for the boom in the sale of fake and expired drugs in Nigeria since the late 1980s.

A Ministry of Health survey in 1987 found that about 70 percent of drugs in Nigeria were fake. Other alarming statistics have been provided by a recent study by Ndidi Ifudu, a doctor at Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH).

Idufu studied 262 products. He found that 61 fake analgesic drugs existed alongside 69 genuine brands and identified 35 bogus antibiotics as opposed to 13 bona fide ones. Of the 14 anti- malarial medicines he studied, only four were the real thing.

Some of the drugs had undergone changes in the quantity, quality or contents of given compounds, which in turn altered their ability to cure.

“Fake drugs does not necessarily mean there is nothing active in the drugs,” explained Dr. Ola Ogunleye of LUTH. “It means the quality is low or the quantity is not what is stated on the pack.”

‘Sale of expired drugs, which is a common feature here, is regarded as faking because in most cases the expiry date is erased while a new date is stamped on the product, which is sold as new,” he added.

Bogus drugs have found easy prey in the many people who, deterred from consulting doctors by the high cost of health care — made more expensive by economic reforms begun in 1986 — resort to treating themselves.

Nigeria imports most of its drugs and, since the exchange rate of the national currency, the naira, has fallen from five to the U.S. dollar in 1986 to 80:1 today, the prices of bona fide medicines have soared.

“In Nigeria there is no actual local drug production. Companies only reconstitute chemicals and repackage drugs,” explains Segun Tokede, a consultant neurophysician. “About 90 percent of the raw materials for such locally produced drugs are imported. Local input is water and labour.”

“Adulterated and sub-standard drugs have been enjoying a trade boom because they cost less than original and proper drugs,” adds Tokede.

The United Nations estimates that about one hundred billion dollars are spent annually on drug production worldwide. Only 0.6 percent of these drugs are produced in Africa, which consumes about three percent of the total global production.

Nigeria’s consumption is put at 750 million dollars annually.

“The problem of fake drugs is quite serious in Nigeria,” says Ogunleye. “Patients who are treated with fake drugs do not get well. The substance they have consumed also constitutes a poison leading to death or economic loss due to protracted illness.”

Tokede agrees: “Many citizens, for example, have developed kidney failure from using expired tetracycline,” he says. “Many have become deaf and others are already blind” from using bogus drugs or the wrong doses of medicine.

To counter the menace of fake drugs, the government set up the National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) while other agencies operate at the state and local government levels.

In principle, when a drug enters the country, NAFDAC officials inspect it and decide if it is fit for consumption, but some dealers still manage to avoid inspection.

“There are occasions where people just import any drug into the country, there is nobody to certify them, they are not even presented for verification by health authorities before being pushed into the market” says Ogunleye.

Just this week, the Lagos State Task Force on counterfeit drugs destroyed medicines worth three million naira (37,500 U.S. dollars).

The drugs, which were bogus, adulterated or expired, were impounded from illegal manufacturers, pharmacists and peddlers in various parts of the state, task force chairman Lt. Col. Butrus Budaye explained.

His body has closed down more than 100 illegal chemists since its creation two years ago.