It is quite frightening reading media reports stating that “42 per cent of pharmaceutical drugs eliminated from the European market in 2012 were sold in Africa”.
The report, published in the East African daily, quoted a Guinean researcher and doctor, Gaoussou Fadiga, as having blamed the rise in kidney failures in Africa on the use of expired drugs from Europe.
Excerpt of the report, mentioned below, is alarming and frightening to say the least.
“42 per cent of pharmaceutical drugs eliminated from the European market in 2012 were sold in Africa,” the Guinean researcher and doctor GaoussouFadiga said.
Dr Fadiga blamed the rise in kidney failures in Africa on the use of expired drugs from Europe.
Media reports on Monday quoted Dr Fadiga as saying that the consumption of the expired pharmaceutical products was and continued to cause kidney failure in millions of African patients.
The African doctor said only collaboration between African governments and the World Health Organisation (WHO) and medical associations could end the flow of expired drugs from Europe to Africa.
If expired pharmaceutical products are exported to Africa, it means all kinds of strange diseases could be experienced by people on the continent, and our lives put at stake of death.
Dr Fadiga’s assertion or finding is firmly corroborated by the fact that the media reports also state that chronic kidney disease was at least three to four times more frequent in Africa than in the developed countries, according to the US National Library of Medicine.
And there could be more to it than meet the eye.
So our call is that our health authorities in The Gambia and Africa at large should tighten their belts to ensure that our society is not infiltrated with expired pharmaceutical products.
They say prevention is better than cure.
“Prevention is better than cure”.
The Point
