Medicines that kill
It's a daily scourge that is quietly gaining ground, growing and worsening year by year. Between coups d'état, wars, terrorism, droughts and other distressing events plaguing the continent, no-one seems to be paying much attention to it. Yet drug trafficking and counterfeiting are skyrocketing in West Africa, claiming around 500,000 victims a year. According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report, between 19% and 50% of the medicines circulating in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad are of below-average quality or fake. And, according to other studies carried out by ECOWAS, this figure rises to 80% in Guinea and Burkina Faso.
According to some estimates, this illegal trade is even more lucrative than the drugs trade. It was already bringing in around one billion dollars in 2019. Some experts and investigators say that counterfeit medicines and vaccines have proliferated since Covid-19, many of them compensating for the general shortage experienced during the pandemic. In the absence of an appropriate legal framework, these drugs are spreading with impunity, and come from two interrelated channels. They may be produced directly in clandestine counterfeit factories in Morocco, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, India or China.
They could also be medicines that have been diverted from several points in a legal production chain. Widespread corruption, involving everyone from lab workers to market resellers, transporters and security agents, takes care of the rest. In 2022, for example, 70 Gambian children died suddenly after ingesting a cough syrup made in India. And whether it’s placebos, expired medicines or downright toxic substances, this trade kills with impunity.
East Africa has a number of institutions that track down the networks, but there are still few legal instruments at their disposal to go further. Yet, for example, a children's syrup marketed by an American brand has just been withdrawn from sale in Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria because it contains too much diethylene glycol, which can be toxic and even fatal. However, we rarely see the issue of counterfeit medicines and tainted substances clearly mentioned in West African countries' health policies. As we all know, it's very difficult to stop any form of trafficking, especially international trafficking. But this one particularly concerns our continent and is flourishing in plain sight, virtually in silence. It's high time we made it a priority. Another one to add to the list.