Symposium for Health Stakeholders (page 32)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah & Sahadatu Atintande.

THE Programme Manager of the National Drug Policy, Mrs Martha Gyansah-Ludtrodt, has stated that the quantum of fake drugs in the country is not known since it needs various methods to be able to determine that.
She has therefore, called for a mechanisms which will help determine the volume on the Ghanaian market for the benefit of consumers.
Speaking at a Health Stakeholders Symposium on Drug Counterfeitng in Accra, Mrs Gyansah-Ludtrodt said Mrs Gyansah-Ludtrodt said in spite of the fact that the issue of fake drugs was a problem even in the developed world, efforts must be made locally to deter quacks from dealing in them in Ghana.
She observed that there was the need for both prescribers and consumers of medicines to join forces to combat drug counterfeiting.
Moderators for the symposium were the Director of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), Professor Alexander N. Nyarko, and the First Secretary of Health and Gender at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Ghana, Mr Marius De Jong Esq.
The Chief Executive of the Food and Drugs Board (FDB), Mr Emmanuel Agyarko, said the issue of fake medicine had recently become complex since people engaged in organised crime were getting involved, a situation he said was making it more difficult to deal with.
He pointed out that more and more sophisticated equipment were being used by these gangs which was making it difficult for state institutions to control.
He observed that since punishment given to people who manufacture fake medicines was not as severe as punishment given to drug and human traffickers, many of such criminals were changing to drug counterfeiting.
He further explained that while those who dealt in narcotics and human trafficking could be sentenced to a prison term of 20 years and 10 years, respectively those who dealt in fake medicines were usually given about six months prison sentence.
Mr Agyarko said in addition to that, drug counterfeiting was less strenuous and more lucrative, adding that as a manufacturer received about 30 per cent profit, the quack might receive around 90 per cent profit.
Speaking on Drug Authenticity Verification System, the Technology Consultant at mPedigree, Mr Ashifi Gogo, said since quacks had over the years been able to outdo manufactures on systems used to check their operations, there was the need for new ones which could stand the test of time to be introduced.
He pointed out that mPedigree had therefore piloted an instance pedigree verification mechanism on cellular platform in the country to help check counterfeiting in medicines.
Mr Gogo said through a mobile phone one would receive a response as to whether a medicine was fake or not if by texting the code of the medicine to short code 1393 on all mobile phone networks throughout the country.
He expressed the hope that the platform could serve as a public-private partnership to curb supply chain deficiencies.
The Chairman of the Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA), Mr Daniel Kojo Arhinful, said that the most important issues concerning drugs in Ghana were their quality, affordability and accessibility.
He made mention of the fact that the less privileged were the people most vulnerable to the problem of drug counterfeiting and gave the assurance that MeTA would soon be launched in Ghana.
The Chairman of One Global Standard (GS1), Mr Kofi Essuman, explained that the GS1 helped in solving the problem of drug counterfeiting by the use of technology.
He said the GS1, which was a global standards regime in supply chain management, used bar codes to trade, trace and check fraud in consumer goods and expressed the hope that it would be of great help in checking drug counterfeiting in Ghana.