China Pushes Fake "Indian" Drugs in Africa

10 June 2009; http://www.safemedicines.org/

Nigeria's food and drug watchdog, the National Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), has seized Chinese-made fake generic anti-malarial drugs with the label 'Made in India'.

India had long suspected that many Chinese firms conspiring with Nigerian drug traders, were dumping fake drugs in Nigeria, to be sold locally as well as in some other African countries like West Africa, South Africa, Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

After being alerted by the Indian high commissioner in the Nigerian capital Abuja, the Indian government has lodged a strong protest with the Chinese foreign trade ministry.

The Indian high commission in Nigeria had been aware for some time that Chinese companies were pushing fake drugs with the 'Made in India' tag since Indian generic drugs are the preferred choice of importers in Nigeria.

Indian high commissioner Mahesh Sachdev has also taken up the issue with the director-general of NAFDAC Dr Paul Orhii, who has assured that his administration would do its best to stop the fake drugs from entering Nigeria.

India is oncerned that these fake drugs manufactured in China and sold in African nations with the 'Made in India' tag could not only harm the country's reputation but also eat into the share of Indian drugs in the generic drug market in Africa.

The UK newspaper The Observer had also reported recently that fake Chinese drugs were flooding the UK market and Bian Zhenjia, China's deputy commissioner of the State Food and Drug Administration, said that it was wrong to say that China was a major exporter of fake drugs'

''I do not agree with what the foreign media has been saying. The Chinese government has always paid great attention to cracking down on fake drugs,'' Bian told a news conference in Beijing yesterday.

He however admitted that the problem could lie with some overseas companies having deals with illegal producers in China where foreign companies import chemicals from China and then use them to produce the drugs.

China has a flourishing but badly regulated pharmaceutical industry, with numerous underground factories and illegal manufacturers of spurious drugs thriving with little or no supervision at all.

In 2006, nearly 100 people in Panama are believed to have died after consuming toxic, mislabelled drugs in cough syrup from China.

Hundreds had also died due to allergic reactions caused by contaminants in the blood thinner heparin imported from China, which eventually led to the product being recalled in the US.

A diabetes drug linked to deaths in China, was pulled out after samples were found containing six times the normal amount of a chemical used to lower blood sugar.

The Chinese drug regulator had to recall many counterfeit and shoddy drugs and herbal medicines, including Chinese versions of Viagra in China itself.

Chinese, and now Indian, companies have been accused of selling fake drugs in Nigeria's $298-million pharmaceutical market, nearly 60 per cent of which comprises imports.

Although, the $298 figure looks small, it is attractive to fake drug manufacturers. According to a survey conducted in Nigeria in 2007, fake drugs make up for over 50 per cent of all drug sales in th country. The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, puts thefigure of fake drugs circulating in the country at nearly 70 per cent.

The NAFDAC website shows that it has blacklisted more than 30 Indian and Chinese companies for exporting fake drugs into the country.

The Nigerian fake drug trade operates with mafia-like thoroughness and is run by wealthy businessmen with links to the underworld.

The director-general of NAFDAC is regarded as one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

Nigerian minister of information, Dorothy "Dora" Akunyili, who was the previous director-general of NAFDAC had been fighting a relentless battle during her tenure with drug traders in Nigeria by publicly burning seized fake drugs and conducting massive raids with armed police battalion.

The wealthy fake drug lords struck back by burning down NAFDAC labs and buildings and even made an attempt to kill her. Akunyili narrowly escaped death when a bullet grazed her head after suspected assassins opened fire on her official car in 2003.

Nobody knows the way the Nigerian fake drug market operates as Akunyil does. A pharmacologist by profession, her diabetic sister, Vivian Edemobi , died in 1988 after being administered fake insulin for two years.

According to Akunyili, who is now the Nigerian minister of information, fake drug manufacturers have become so sophisticated, that even multinational drug companies find it difficult to say whether their own drugs in Nigeria are genuine or fakes.