Counterfeit, obsolete drugs pose safety risk, say health experts

Poverty is pushing patients towards cheaper counterfeit medicines, many of which have passed their expiry dates and pose a health hazard, according to health officials.

“Poor patients are at risk from using expired and fake medicines,” said Dr Hashem al-Zain, World Health Organization representative in Yemen. Al-Zain added that almost all counterfeit drugs – which are considerably cheaper than drugs manufactured in the west – are smuggled into the country, mostly from India and China.

According to health workers, however, most of these cheaper imitation drugs have not been tested in laboratories and, if they are genuine, have often passed their expiry dates. Additionally, they seldom meet international standards for proper storage.

Yaqoub Nahshal, 24, said that his mother was a victim of such medicine. “I bought medicine for my sick mother who had hypertension,” he recalled. “But a few hours after taking the medication – one pill – her condition grew noticeably worse.” After an investigation, Nahshal said, the medicine was found to have passed its expiry date – a mistake that almost cost his mother her life.

According to Mohammed al-Asali, a member of the parliamentary health committee, about 70 percent of the drugs available in Yemen are contraband. “There is no quality control checking,” he said. According to some health experts, smuggled medicines mainly enter the country from the Horn of Africa, particularly Djibouti, from where they are brought by sea to the Yemeni coast.

“Trading in counterfeit drugs is a lucrative business worldwide. Unfortunately, some pharmacies [in Yemen] do not buy medicines from their original producers. Some years ago, we discovered a bottle filled with water, instead of medicine. This is dangerous and can lead to death,” said WHO’s Hashem al-Zein.

Yemen spends about US $117m a year on medicines, according to the country’s Supreme Drugs Authority. Most of this is spent on importing medicines from 50 countries through 400 importers, as the local pharmaceutical plants produce only 17 percent of Yemen’s requirements.

Local pharmaceutical producers complain that counterfeit drugs are killing their business. “This is really a serious problem for us as emerging medicine industrials. We cannot compete with smuggled and counterfeit medicine that is sold at low prices. It is also affecting the importers of medicine,” said Abdulhakeem Shawkat, executive manager of Yemeni Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Union. Shawkat added that part of the problem was the absence of a legal provision proscribing dealings in counterfeit medicines.

At a May workshop in Sana’a devoted to the hazards of counterfeit and obsolete drugs, a panel of doctors and health experts recommended that medicine smugglers be tried and prosecuted in court. The recommendations were made a few days after a woman was arrested entering the country with 80 packets of medicine valued at YR 800,000 [about US $4,061]. Reportedly, the woman had not kept the drugs at carefully controlled temperatures, making them potentially harmful to consumers.

In an effort to eradicate the trend, local authorities in various parts of the country have recently seized and destroyed large quantities of counterfeit drugs and medicines. “Fifteen tones of fake and smuggled medicines were seized in the Haradh district, Sana'a International Airport, Hudaidah Airport and in the Aden and Taiz governorates,” said Adel Humaid, head of the Drug Monitoring Department at the Ministry of Health’s Higher Authority for Medicine . “These large quantities were destroyed in the presence of the concerned authorities.”

MAJ+MAQ/AR/AM