The counterfeit pharmaceutical industry is thriving in West Africa, with law enforcement agencies battling to crack down on foreign-linked criminal syndicates. And criminals have been keeping the head of the Intellectual Property Rights Unit busy as the pandemic has created the perfect storm for fake medicines to flourish. “It is really scary,” said Mohammed Babandede, head of Nigeria’s Intellectual Property Rights Unit. He notes that 30m counterfeit tablets were recently seized in a single week.
BBC News reports that he said authorities in India had provided intelligence on a shipment arriving at Tin Can Island Port in Lagos, the commercial capital. The consignment included significant amounts of counterfeit dexamethasone which is believed to treat severe COVID-19 symptoms. In the same week, he also intercepted 920,000 fake tramadol tablets at Lagos airport that had come from India's main city, Mumbai. These pills were likely destined for markets in northern Nigeria where abuse of the drug is rampant.
Dr Alero Roberts, a senior lecturer at Lagos University Teaching Hospital, is lucky that the hospital has a robust drug procurement system and they do not have problems with falsified medicines, although they do see patients who have encountered bad drugs. She is concerned there may be more in the coming months due to the effect COVID-19 is having on the supply of drugs in Nigeria. "There are shortages looming – cancer drugs, antibiotics," Roberts said.
When hospital pharmacies go out of stock, patients will purchase drugs elsewhere, often from unregulated markets. And they do not need to go far, outside her hospital window Roberts can see marketers selling two things – "drugs and coffins". The lack of regulatory oversight is one of the reasons why the region is so attractive to criminals in the business of falsifying medicines. And in West Africa it is a big business.
[link url="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53387216"]Full BBC News report[/link]