7 February 2008
Lagos — Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Dora Akunyili has stated that global sales of counterfeit drugs estimated at $32billion has dealt a crippling blow of $46billion annual loss to the pharmaceutical industry world wide.
Akunyili stated this yesterday while addressing hundreds of African Regulatory Heads and officials who converged at Indaba Conference Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa to share strategies on combating the hydra headed problem of drug counterfeiting in the region.
Prof. Akunyili said that even in USA with the most policed drug regulations, cases of drug counterfeiting were on the increase, rising from 9 cases in 1997 to 58 in 2006. Even though drug counterfeiting is a global problem, she elaborated, developing countries particularly the poor bore the brunt because they were more predisposed to sickness as a result of poor living conditions.
The Director-General pointed out that the conference, being the first within the region, has created forum for Heads of African Regulatory Agencies to share information, intelligence services and harmonize effective strategies for tackling drug counterfeiting which had thrived for ages because of lack of awareness and cooperation among stakeholders.
According to her, other African nations and even developed ones have a lot to learn from Nigeria's success in the fight against fake drugs wherein N22billion worth of such spurious drugs have been destroyed in the last 6 years and more than 45 offenders convicted by the court.
Her words "Drug Counterfeiting is the worst form of man's inhumanity to man. NAFDAC will soon commence the use of serialized holographic label to safeguard NAFDAC registration number on registered products to prevent counterfeiters from copying and faking NAFDAC numbers.
The fight against drug counterfeiting requires collaboration among all nations, just as the international community is doing for HIV/AIDS and Polio".
Earlier, the conference chairperson, Prof. Tervor Jones commended African Regulatory Network (ARN), an adhoc regional network of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIS) who organized the conference.
Prof. Jones observed that the themes and objectives of the conference offer opportunity to promote partnership between African regulatory authorities and the pharmaceutical industry, facilitate open discussion on current topics important to the region, raise awareness of the regulatory environment and promote exchange of information.
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