The United Nations issued another warning last week that central Africa could be facing a major public health threat from trafficked and illicit medicines, resulting from the chasm between healthcare needs and access to safe, affordable treatment, reports africanews.
TB, malaria and HIV are prevalent in the six countries comprising the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) but there is a scarcity of treatment and safe medicines, which if available, are often unaffordable.
This fuels the illicit market for medical products, according to the new report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and CEMAC, which said traffickers divert prescription drugs from regulated supply chains and national health programme stocks.
Counterfeit, substandard unapproved drugs are also peddled, and these include everything from antibiotics, anti-malarial drugs, painkillers and anti-inflammatories to psychoactive substances like tramadol and pregabalin.
Between 2020 and 2025, around 251 tonnes of medicines were seized in Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, according to the report.
UNODC said the the trafficking “constitutes a major threat to public health, leading to treatment failures, poisonings and avoidable deaths”.
Sometimes the illicit medicines even end up in official healthcare facilities – where they are perceived as safe – said the report.
“To give a sense of the scale of the phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa, WHO estimated in 2017 that falsified or substandard anti-malarials could be associated with between 72 000 and 267 000 deaths each year, and that poor quality antibiotics used to treat childhood pneumonia could be linked to up to 169 271 deaths annually,” it said.
Most trafficked medicines enter the region via its sea and river ports, or are smuggled in by air as freight or in passengers’ luggage before being distributed to the hinterland along major trade roads.
“This trade fuels organised crime, weakens public institutions, and promotes recreational use of addictive psychoactive substances,” UNODC added.
In the CAR, armed groups are earning money by looting health centres and levying “taxes” on shipments of products passing through areas under their control, the report said.
Last month, Gabon customs officials seized a haul of 17 000 tramadol tablets, which they blamed on cross-border narcotics traffickers from neighbouring Cameroon.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Fake medicines kill half a million Africans every year
Africa bears the brunt of the counterfeit medicine curse
Fake malaria drugs cause up to 158 000 deaths yearly in sub-Saharan Africa
7 African countries sign agreement criminalising fake medicine