MP calls for ban on sub-standard medicines

Tanzanian Member of Parliament Raynald Mrope has called on President Benjamin Mkapa’s government to suspend the importation of medicines from India, claiming that they were sub-standard, the pharmaceutical industry intelligence report “MarketLetter” reported on Tuesday. “MarketLetter” quoted Mrope as saying that Tanzania was rapidly becoming a “dumping ground” for sub-standard drugs from India, and that poor quality medicines were already being widely distributed to patients.

Indian High Commissioner to Tanzania Virendra Gupta denied the claims. “No government in the world would allow its industries to export sub-standard goods because these would affect trade relations as well as tarnish the country’s image,” he said. However, Gupta did say that counterfeit and time-expired drugs could be transported to Tanzania illegally. “Sometimes sub-standard drugs are smuggled out of the country [India],” he said.

Indian drugs manufacturers produce cheaper copies of brand-name drugs, including the anti-retrovirals (ARVs) used in the drug cocktail to fight HIV/AIDS. The Tanzanian government in July agreed to provide ARVs to HIV-positive women free of charge, in an effort to break mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. A pilot study in four hospitals in Tanzania found that the use of ARVs had reduced mother-to-child HIV transmission by 60 percent, “MarketLetter” reported in July.