Source: The African Report
Written by Prince Ofori-Atta
Tuesday, 07 June 2011 16:35
Ghanaians and Kenyans have a new lease of life as mPedigree, a non-profit-making organisation, launches a mobile warfare against Africa’s merchants of death: the sinister counterfeit drugs industry.
Ghanaians and Kenyans have a new lease of life as mPedigree, a non-profit-making organisation, launches a mobile warfare against Africa’s merchants of death: the sinister counterfeit drugs industry.
Mobile phones have become a lifeline to many across the African continent, offering otherwise inaccessible services, including banking, security, health and education, among others, to people in some of the remotest areas. A far cry from the 1990s when they were considered as luxury items, mobile phones have evolved into a popular tool in the fight against counterfeit medicines; an ill that threatens the lives of millions around the world, especially Africa.In a recent declaration, the World Customs Organisation warned that Sub-Sahara Africa was fast becoming the worst affected by the global counterfeiting crisis. The World Health Organisation (WHO) also revealed a few years ago that as many as one in four pharmaceutical drugs sold in the developing world were counterfeit.
But despite campaigns that seek to sensitise populations on the risks of fake drugs, counterfeit trade has continued in its sinister stride as Sub-Sahara Africa remains a fertile ground for knock-off goods from other continents. Emmanuel Nmashie Doku, Police Commissioner in Ghana, recently admitted that the West African nation’s police force had made a haul of about 17 containers of counterfeit products; giving impetus to WHO’s warning.
“Some of the suppliers,” says Mr. Kofi Essel, Acting Head of Food Inspectorate at the Ghana Food and Drugs Board, “are aiding and abetting with people who are producing fake samples of the same commodity that they may be supplying (…) they take two cartons of (a product, ed) from the original supplier and five from the fake supplier (…) mix it up and sell to retailers who lack the sophisticated system to check the authenticity of the product”.
“Counterfeiting trade has become (so) sophisticated that I believe that even manufacturers who own trademarks are having difficulties identifying whether their products, versus the counterfeits, can be detected” argues Mr. Adu-Darkwah Gyamfi, executive director at the Ghana Standards Board.
The complex nature of counterfeiting is hurting many successful local manufacturers who continue to fall prey to their own success. Consequently, tens of thousands of people die each year from counterfeit drugs in the developing world.
But technology is succeeding where law enforcement has failed to yield results due to limited financial resources and manpower. “Technology is a dynamic field in which there are updates and changes that can be deployed quickly (…) compared to law enforcement” says Ashifi Gogo, chief technologist at M-Pedigree.
Taking the battle against counterfeit medicines to an unlikely field, mPedigree recently launched a mobile phone application that monitors the authenticity of a drug at the point-of-sale. Says Nii Akai Tettey, Supervisor at M-Pedigree: “mPedigree is a mobile based quality assurance system that allows consumers to use their mobile phones to check whether a product they have just purchased is genuine or not”.
Consumers of prescription drugs are encouraged to text scratch card numbers provided on medicine packets to mPedigree for authentication. Within minutes, a response is sent confirming whether or not the drug is a fake.
Coupled with the fact that the service comes at no cost to consumers, the ingenuity of mPedigree’s application is adjudged most pertinent in Ghana and Kenya, two countries that rank fourth and fifth, respectively, in the world for mobile only internet connections.
“When some ‘wise guy’ sent a text message (a prank) around midnight of Jan. 18, 2010, warning others to stay clear of buildings because of an impending earthquake in Ghana, the news spread like fire through texts and calls. (Haiti was hit a week earlier). Within an hour of that text message, the entire nation was out on the streets till 5am. And guess the one thing each person grabbed before leaving their homes? Not the TV, not jewellery; they took their cell-phones,” Edward Kutsoati, Associate Professor of Economics at Tufts University, wrote late last year.
”The project is growing beyond beyond simply the innovation. It is becoming more of a grassroots and a broadbased effort involving multiple stakeholders across the region with all of them focused and concentrated on ensuring that the ordinary citizens and consumers get the best from the medicines they buy,” says Bright Simons, founder of mPedigree.
Early this year, mPedigree’s drug police system won an award at the Nextplorateur Forum under the aegis of UNESCO for their innovative use of technolog 
