Nigeria, China mount fresh fight against fake drugs

{jathumbnail off}Nigeria and China have agreed to a new memorandum allowing food and drug regulators in both countries to mount a joint combat against fake drugs and counterfeit products.The memorandum, to be signed in early 2012, will see Nigeria's National Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, and China's State Food and Drug Administration, SFDA, work together on joint campaigns and public enlightenmnent.Officials of both regulators met to thrash out areas of cooperation in Abuja, where they announced they will maintain a joint commitment to build capacity of officials to sustain efforts and provide good quality products.Speaking at a joint press briefing after the meeting, NAFDAC's director-general Dr Paul Orhii said counterfeiting and fake drugs still remained the biggest challenge for regulators.'The problem is greater in developing nations where counterfeiters target drugs that are used in high volume and for managing diseases of public interest,' he said.China's SFDA deputy commissioner Wu Zhen said both regulators held the same value for ensuring high quality products, even though they came from different systems.Speaking through an interpreter, Wu observed that cooperation between agencies of different countries was necessary because responsibilities and difficulties regarding pharmaceutical supervision were increasing beyond the powers of a single regulator.Sentence and finePrevious cooperation between both countries saw tangible result after six Chinese nationals involved in the manufacture of fake antimalarials shipped to Nigeria were sentenced to death in December 2009, said Orhii.Since then, NAFDAC has also sought cooperation with India, considered alongside China to be one of top origin countries of counterfeit drugs entering the Nigerian market.While China stipulates death penalty on conviction, Indian laws enable regulators to seize assets of people convicted of counterfeiting.NAFDAC is pushing for laws that will offenders sentenced to anything from 15 years to life in prison, after an initial suggestion for death sentence met stiff opposition from rights groups.Orhii said the agency's prosecution of offenders have resulted only in fines of around N500,000, a meagre amount considering the danger drug counterfeiters pose to the public.He lamented that Nigeria, which suffered most from the effect of counterfeiting, had some of the weakest laws against it.NAFDAC wants the new law to enable it seize assets of offenders and possible use them to pay compensate to victims directly affected by fake drugs.NAFDAC is also pushing the use of technologies against counterfeiting, including a handheld device that detects fake products and a mobile phone-based querying system that compares barcoding on drug packaging against a database of genuine drug active ingredients.
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