Nigeria Fights Counterfeit Drugs

Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has been cracking down on counterfeit drugs in Nigeria, the U.N. Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) reports.

Last month NAFDAC shut down a market known to be the center of the fake drug trade and has seized more than 80 truckloads of counterfeit drugs.

"The Onitsha market is responsible for distributing most fake drugs in Nigeria," Dora Akunyili, head of NAFDAC, told IRIN. Currently 15 percent of the drug supply in Nigeria is fake, Akunyili said, citing a joint study by her agency and the World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO estimates that the incidence of counterfeit medicines ranges from 1 percent in developed countries to more than 10 percent in the poorer countries, IRIN reports. But the agency notes that many countries in Africa have recorded a rate of more than 30 percent.

At the time Akunyili was appointed in 2001, roughly 68 percent of all drugs circulating in Nigeria were unregistered and more than 41 percent were fake or substandard, she told IRIN. In 2002 she launched a program to register and certify all drugs for sale in the country.

NAFDAC aims to audit all pharmaceutical traders to determine which drugs are fake, substandard or unregistered and eliminate them, according to IRIN. But the agency acknowledges that the current system of drug approval in Nigeria needs to be reformed.