A national action plan to fight the alarming rise of fake and sub-standard medicines in South Africa will be implemented from next year, aimed at rooting out illegal products that have seeped into the market, including weight loss medication.
EWN reports that the plan has been developed by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA), guided by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the plan, which would be implemented from 2026 to 2030, aimed to ensure all fake medicines are removed from the market.
Guarding measures were to be introduced at ports of entry and would also include market surveillance and inspecting medicine manufacturers, and he said the implementation would be driven by technical working groups, including border management, police and suppliers.
Hotline spike
The rise in substandard products over the past three years had been flagged by the SAPHRA whistle-blower hotline, which had received a five-fold increase in tip-offs since 2021, CEO Dr Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela told TimesLIVE.
“In 2021 we had about 130 reports of substandard and falsified products, in 2022 about 297, in 2023 it was about 430… As of August, we’ve had about 507, so there’s a significant increase,” she said, adding that e-commerce platforms and spaza shops were largely responsible for the availability of these products.
Some of the products were easily detectable because of obvious and visible poor quality, and she said educating the public on this was important.
“I don’t think we are doing enough (to teach people) when they see sediments in a cough syrup, or when they see packaging not looking like what they have seen before, or tablets falling apart…. so we need to make sure we communicate this, and that people are aware there is a mechanism to report this.”
Africa was one of the first countries globally to operationalise a comprehensive strategy against substandard and falsified medical products, aimed at strengthening prevention, detection and response mechanisms through a co-ordinated multi-sectoral action as guided by the draft handbook developed for this purpose by the WHO, according to Shenaaz El-Halabi, a WHO representative in South Africa, who said these products posed a serious threat to treatment outcomes, and that the pilot would be aligned with a global standard set by the WHO two years ago.
“This (launch) is not merely a technical issue, it’s a political and development challenge that demands attention at the highest levels of government and at the WHO,” El-Halabi added.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Almost a fifth of medicines in Africa sub-standard or falsified
Sub-standard generic medicines killing children globally
WHO probes raw materials link in lethal cough syrups