Public Agenda (Accra)
Frederick Asiamah
25 April 2008
Imagine being able to check the authenticity of any drug you purchase by the use of text messages. This idea may be totally unfamiliar but MPedigree, an emerging stakeholder forum around the subject of technology's role in the fight against fake drugs thinks it is highly possible.
Last week, at the premises of Goethe Institut in Accra, the forum outdoored 'If Symptoms Persist,' a 31 minute film that presents a probe into the fake drugs situation relying on expert testimony, stakeholder opinions and the reactions of ordinary consumers.
The film is billed as the first documentary about the subject to be commissioned and produced in Africa (the BBC and CBS have in the past addressed the subject in the same medium.
It also features what its producers describe as a world first: mobile telephony, as an end-user, anti-counterfeit platform with a view to mitigating despair about what is a deeply harrowing situation.
It is largely a narration truncated by interviews with several experts. Some of the experts who contributed to the documentary are the Commissioner of the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service, Mr. Emmanuel N. Doku; the CEO of the Foods & Drugs Board, Mr. Emmanuel Agyarko; the Executive Director of the Ghana Standards Board; Mr. Adu-Darkwa Gyamfi; and the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Elias Kavineh Sory.
Also, Dr. Alex Dodoo, President, Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana; and Dr. Ferdinand Tay, President, Consumers Association of Ghana, are seen in the film issuing dire warnings about the consequences of leaving the fake drugs menace unchecked.
According to the World Health Organisation, between eight and sixteen percent of medicine circulating in the Asian subregion are fake.
Worldwide, China alone is said to be responsible for about ninety percent of counterfeit drugs.
In the recent past, media reports have suggested the presence in the Ghanaian marketplace of innocuously packaged 'dangerous medicine.' This is what the film, funded by the Boston-based African Development Corporation and the US National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance and produced by the Ghanaian creative house, AD-VISORS hopes to generate public discussions around.
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