BBC World Service recently interviewed mPedigree co-founder, Ashifi Gogo, discussing the issue of fake drugs and our innovative solution to the problem. BBC's Health Check program regularly profiles salient issues in healthcare from around the world, holding interviews with experts in the field and capturing first-person accounts. The insightful program is broadcast worldwide on radio and via a podcast on the Internet. Radio broadcasts are still very relevant in developing nations since radio enjoys a larger listener base than TV or Internet-based platforms. Leading mobile phone manufacturers are including radios in cell phones for such regions.

The Nigerian food and drug regulator, NAFDAC, has achieved admirable progress in the fight against fake drugs under the leadership of Prof. Dora Akunyili. Five years after an attempt on her life due to effective anti-counterfeit enforcement, Prof. Akunyili and her staff continually oppose the importation, sale and consumption of counterfeit medication in Nigeria.

NAFDAC is spreading it's reach abroad, solving the counterfeit drug problem at source by banning a number of foreign and local companies from selling in Nigeria, bringing the total to 31, as listed on the NAFDAC site. It is encouraging to see the likes of UNICEF engage in the continual effort to enforce anti-counterfeit policy, and mPedigree envisions a future in which technology plays a larger role in safeguarding the public from the fake drug menace.

Under a new US bill, counterfeiters can go to jail for life if their products kill an individual, or spend a significant amount of time behind bars if the individual suffers injury but not death. The PRO IP (Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property) Act of 2007 makes this possible, in addition to forging a new strategic focus and creating roles in government for IP enforcement. With a price tag of only $435m for four years, let's hope there is enough bandwidth for real action.

MPedigree will certainly welcome a partnership with the international training and information exchange efforts scheduled under the act, as both CACIT and the US government stand to gain from such activities.

With America's most pro-active ePedigree state continually shifting the implementation deadline, what hope is there for such a technological implementation in the lesser-endowed developing world? The deadline for ePedigree adoption has been moved to 2015 due to regulatory and technological hurdles, with support from the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) and the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA). While the RFID-based technology is being tweaked for widespread adoption, developing nations must proceed on a realistic technology track. We recommend repurposing technology that already works in such regions - mobile phones and scratchoff codes. The technology, employed in the reliable top-up card model, has successfully played a significant role in powering Africa's mobile phone revolution. Why stop there?

India is the grand stage of the greatest economic drama ongoing in the Global South. Innovation and technological progress are lifting millions out of poverty, bridging the gap between the two worlds of poverty and affluence across the two global hemispheres, and redressing the imbalance in resources that compels the Global South to bear a disproportionate share of Global Challenges while missing out on its portion of global bounties. Counterfeiting reflects this unwholesome situation in all its gory dimensions. Poor countries lack access to medicines generally, and yet bear the greatest burden of safeguarding their markets from the onslaught of toxic chemicals posing as medicines. The Inclusive Growth Project at the world's foremost Business School, IMD, recognises these tragic paradoxes, and will together with India's premier business association, the CII, and the ICA of the Indian Ministry of Corporate Affairs hold a major global stakeholder event next month in New Delhi. MPedigree is grateful to the Council of Global Thought Leaders of the Inclusive Growth Project for selecting its West African platform as worthy of being showcased as a Global Best Practice case study.

A recent mPedigree-facilitated event showcased an encouraging collaborative effort between Ghana's leading health authorities and foreign-based anti-counterfeit resource personnel. In his address, Rev. Jonathan Martey, deputy CEO of Ghana's drug regulatory body, the Food and Drugs Board (FDB) expressed deep concern for the recent increase in market presence of lifestyle drugs packaged with foreign-language instructions, stressing the need for increased multi-sector collaboration against counterfeiting. It is therefore quite pleasing that the stakeholder forum on Safe Medicines in Accra featured comments from Mr. Scott LaGanga, Executive Director of the Partnership for Safe Medicines, a consumer-focussed organization that tackles the issue of fake drugs. In his address, Mr. LaGanga highlighted the global prevalence of counterfeit medication, calling for even greater global collaboration in a bid to safeguard consumers everywhere from fake drugs.

MPedigree is pleased to be associated with such key programs in forging a unified voice against drug counterfeiting, as evidenced by its membership of the Coalition Against Counterfeit and Illicit Trade, CACIT.

The Deputy Minister for Health of the Government of Ghana, Dr. Mrs. Ashitey, highlights one of the hazards consumers in low-literacy environments face daily: the purchase of expired or counterfeited drugs. Speaking at the recent health forum on Global Partnerships for Safe Medicines in Accra, Dr. Ashitey implored health professionals to exercise ethical practice as part of their contributions in assisting Government's efforts to bolster health initiatives in the country. The event, which follows Ghana's first national dialogue on counterfeiting, drew a decent audience, including experts on anti-counterfeiting from the USA.

The need to provide affordable and effective treatments to consumers and patients everywhere has been highlighted by the WHO's Director General, Margaret Chan. While the "access versus quality" debate has been present in developmental health care circles for a while now, the new twist of fake medication (which could include toxic ingredients) gives credence to the belief that a fake drug could be worse than no drug at all, especially in the case of malaria where experts assert that counterfeit medication has a role to play in boosting parasitic resistance to recommended doses of genuine drugs.

While evidence continually emerges supporting the alarming presence of counterfeit anti-malarials on the streets of developing nations, it is a relief to know that technology solutions purposefully designed for such nations is making good progress towards large-scale deployment.

The recent Stakeholder Forum on Safe Medicines in Accra, Ghana provided key decision-makers in the health sector with a platform for sharing ideas regarding anti-counterfeit strategies fit for the West-African subregion. Scott A. LaGanga, exec. director of the Partnership for Safe Medicines expressed concern at the presence of counterfeit medication globally, while seeking increased collaboration on generating a unified anti-counterfeit effort to address the menace.

The US-based Partnership for Safe Medicines provides resources online that boost anti-counterfeit capacity building efforts via easy and accessible education on the subject.

The deputy Chief Executive of Ghana's food and drug regulatory body, the Food and Drugs Board (FDB), clearly states the revenue losses as a result of importation and smuggling of counterfeit products. For a country with over a quarter of its population below the poverty line, this is quite a significant number. An EU study showed a 90% increase in counterfeit product trade in the last 3 years. With such an alarming growth rate, the FDB is taking serious action, as evidenced by the recent sub-regional conference on anti-counterfeit strategies.

As with many estimates of illicit activity, published figures serve as a rough guide, and the real prevalence could be significantly different. At any rate, the human toll cannot bear a price tag.

Last month, a very exciting partnership between Ghana's drug regulator, the Food and Drugs Board, the EU BizClim Facility and the Institute of packaging yielded a very fruitful sub-regional dialogue on anti-counterfeit measures, exemplified by the launch of the Coalition Against Counterfeit and Illicit Trade (BCACIT) and the publishing of a Communique (pdf). But on the anti-counterfeit clock, five weeks is plenty of time for counterfeiters to evolve new strategies, move to the next village and cover up their tracks. Modern Ghana publishes a follow-up piece on the conference, with an emphasis on the new drive to have a national resolution on anti-counterfeit technology.
Our conference coverage is online.

In an interesting article on In-Pharma Technologist, the plight of a genuine Chinese drug manufacturer is highlighted in light of rampant counterfeiting that contributed to a 15% drop in Q2 sales this year. The company has resorted to litigation in a bid to push counterfeit versions of Xianling Gubao (XLGB - osteoporosis treatment), Tongjitang Chinese Medicines's flagship product, off the Chinese market. There is often a chasm between engaging legal rights and the disappearance of fake versions, and litigation has a reputation of bearing a hefty price tag.
As long-espoused by Prof. Dora Akunyili of Nigeria's food and drug regulator (NAFDAC), counterfeiters possess the power to pose existential threats to local industry, especially in developing nations. Tongjitang Chinese Medicines hopes that an expansion to the US market would shield them from counterfeiters due to the lower propensity for consumers to purchase fakes in America.

The Brand Protection Council features mPedigree as an innovation in their technology outlook column. The article provides weigh-in from experts in brand security and discusses the appropriateness of leveraging GSM infrastructure to suit developing nations.
BPCouncil is dynamic virtual community where leading brand protection and IP professionals can access information, resources and best practices. ¹

The IMANI think-tank, the only think-tank to receive, twice, the John Templeton Prize in Africa for Advancing Freedom, talks about mPedigree's technology-based drive to fight counterfeit medication in developing nations. Franklin Cudjoe, Managing Editor of IMANI's flagship site at AfricanLiberty.org highlights the case of Tanzania in his brief piece on mPedigree.

In-Pharma Technologist, a leading news aggregator for pharmaceutical insiders, highlights the close nature of mPedigree's work with emerging trends among West-African pharma policy makers at the recently-ended West-African conference against counterfeiting and piracy.
You can find our coverage of the event here.

The Ghanaian media highlights the recent Health Stakeholders Symposium organized by mPedigree and the Ministry of Health. More information is presented here.

The third conference in Pharmaceutical Anti-counterfeiting Strategies organized by market researcher Visiongain is to highlight the counterfeiting issue in developing nations this year. The conference chair, Dr Eric Noehrenberg (International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations) reiterates the large disparity in fake drug prevalence in developing and developed nations.
The conference promisses to highlight:

• The legislative development in Europe and the US
• Technical solutions such as RFID and barcode technology
• International collaboration to combat counterfeiting
• The role of parallel trade and internet pharmacies

Through the market presence of counterfeits on markets is much larger in developing nations, Internet-based pharmacies are posing a growing threat to developed nations as confirmed by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations (EFPIA) which "estimates that 80-90 per cent of medicines supplied over the Internet are fake".

It is our hope that the plight of developing nations provokes enough thought to produce clear steps leading to an appropriate solution, as the conference goes on from 30th June to 2nd July, 2008.
The conference program has been locally cached here.

The European Union's recent focus on the risks associated with repackaging pharmaceuticals has drawn a lot of attention from industries that thrive on repackaging for the largely humanitarian grounds of lowering the cost of medication. The implementation of tamper-evident seals poses a significant risk in the sustainability of drug delivery systems in countries like Malta, where the need for affordable medication is great.
Parallel trade certainly has both advantages and drawbacks, and as the evidence is being analyzed, proponents of the system highlight the additional security layer presented by a new layer of scrutiny, while at the cost of creating a very complicated supply chain, as big pharma asserts.

The NanoEncryption forensic technology has gained a significant boost in the feasibility of large scale implementation thanks to the recent FDA approval. The technology offered by NanoInk, which is claimed to significantly dissuade counterfeiters from copying drugs protected by the technology, allows NanoInk authentication centres to validate drugs, albeit within 24 to 48 hours.

Bright Simons, mPedigree co-founder, provides some insight into mPedigree's history, current status and future in this detailed interview by ShareIdeas.org. The collaborative effort of the mPedigree initiative is yielding early promissing results. Among other things, Bright notes that "we conducted a partial analysis of media coverage of counterfeit issues and detected a three-fold increase in the two months after we launched our social marketing effort compared to the three months prior."
The article has been cached locally here.
Related blog post: here.

MPedigree collaboratively organized its first Health Stakeholders Symposium with the theme: Innovation for Health Governance at the Government of Ghana's Ministry of Health. The event which featured presentations from key stakeholders in the pharmaceutical and anti-counterfeit scene, successfully espoused the need for stakeholder integration in the search for innovative solutions to public and private health issues, with a specific focus on counterfeiting.
Read more here.

Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker lead a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in unraveling the fake drug trade from source to end consumer.

There has been a significant rise in the seizure of counterfeit medication as judged by the Pharmaceutical Security Institute (PSI). With popular drugs totaling $3bn recently seized, business seems to be booming in the growing global counterfeit industry.
Pharmaceutical multinational Pfizer asserts that it loses $2bn each year to counterfeit Viagra - a value that exceeds the revenue obtained from legitimate sales last year! The report from PSI indicates that erectile dysfunction drugs are still highly favored by counterfeiters in their illegal trade.
PSI also lists China, the US, Brazil, Russia and India among the top counterfeiters in 2007.

Counterfeit artesunate in South-East Asia is a problem that is almost two decades old. Researchers in the field of malaria prevention and cure have noted that there is no geographically-based malaria parasite insulation: disease resistant strains in Asia can migrate to Africa and beyond. With counterfeit malaria medication often containing little over 10% of the recommended therapeutic dose, fake drug producers are accelerating the parasite's immunity development process, leading to a potential global health crisis of incurable malaria or economically-inaccessible malaria remedies.

The SMS & Mobile Messaging Association, 160 Characters Ltd, highlights the mPedigree project and its nomination for the notable Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) 2008 Innovation Award. The article indicates that "now in their fourth year, the IET 2008 Innovation Awards highlights the importance of innovation by celebrating its application across a range of engineering disciplines from across the world."
The news item has been cached locally, here.

MPedigree co-founder, Ashifi Gogo, is featured on the Dartmouth College homepage as mPedigree's work gains recognition. Gogo, a PhD Innovation Program Fellow at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, comments on the recently completed technology trial and plans in place for scaling up mPedigree's technology rollout.
"Society needs more than technical skill from engineering graduates today," says Joe Helble, Professor and Dean of Engineering at Dartmouth. "We need graduates with the ability to apply those skills to solve society's most pressing problems in critical areas such as energy, communications, the environment, and medicine."

The mPedigree initiative gets entered into the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) 2008 Innovation Awards, with comments from the IET Chief Executive, Robin McGill.
The article by Cellular News has been locally cached here

The British Government donor agency, Department for International Development (DFID), initiates a new campaign centered around boosting the quality of drugs in developing nations. Ghana is one of the sites for the DFID-funded Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA) pilots seeking a boost in drug pedigree. The MeTA-inspired "Ask Your Pharmacist" campaign is in response to a challenge by the Vice President of Ghana, Aliu Mahama, to the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana (Headed by Dr. A. Dodoo, featured in the documentary).

The Nigerian drug regulators (NAFDAC) have seized a very large batch of counterfeit drugs, discovering that fake signatures and stamps were used in the processing of the goods. NAFDAC is getting good results out of their partnership with other governmental agencies in Nigeria - an example of the need for inter-sectorial collaboration in the fight against fakes. MPedigree looks forward to obtaining even greater outcomes while facilitating similar stakeholder collaborations within the sub-Saharan African region.

Prof. Dora Akunyili discusses the very notable rise of NAFDAC's anti-counterfeit efforts in Nigeria, leading to the drop of counterfeit medication prevalence on the Nigerian market from an estimated 80% to levels, she asserts, currently less than 10%.


During the extensive Question and Answer session after her talk, the Professor re-iterated the need to avoid consuming fake medication. In the case of malaria, fake medication may be worse than no medication at all! Fake anti-malarials or sub-dose administration (due to poverty-induced drug micro-purchasing habits) could transform ill patients into rich breeding grounds for very resistant strains of the prolific malaria parasite. Unfortunately, when such new strains spread, new drugs are needed rapidly - drugs that may not even have been invented yet. With malaria killing a child every thirty seconds, fake drugs are a crime against humanity, and mPedigree is proud to be an agent in the fight against counterfeit medication, specifically in developing nations.

She recently granted a detailed interview with the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), locally cached here.

The US health authorities have been a long-time proponent of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology as a means of securing product supply chains. While the US Food and Drug Administration grapples with the seemingly innumerable challenges related to large-scale RFID deployment, manufactures seeking end-user product assurance technologies often resort to the use of aged and "cracked" technology: holograms.

With the advent of a new wave of technologies specifically designed for developing nations, we anticipate an increased dynamic partnership between government, industry and consumers in securing the future health of citizenry - a critical action needed to sustain healthy national growth and development while keeping developing nations on track in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Nokia and other mobile phone device manufacturers are increasingly recognizing the need to factor in phone features that are specifically useful in the developing world. With mobile design labs, such companies gather ideas for anthropological study and possible product development. "Designing for the last 3 billion" is a concept gaining significant momentum, to mPedigree's delight.

The Business Coalition Against Counterfeit and Illicit Trade (BCACIT) in collaboration with mPedigree facilitated a press briefing at the Ghana Food and Drugs Board in commemoration of World IP Day. The briefing featured an address from WIPO presented by the CEO of the Ghana Food and Drugs Board, Mr. E. Kyeremateng Agyarko, and additional remarks from Mr. K. Essuman of BCACIT. Various trade and industry representatives were present, and the event was telecast nationally. The event ended with a viewing of mPedigree's documentary on fake drugs: "If Symptoms Persist".

If Symptoms Persist, a half-hour documentary on fake drugs, recieves two nation-wide telecasts amidst growing civil society awareness of fake drugs in developing nations.

MPedigree launches a new documentary on anticounterfeit activities in developing nations. The half-hour feature, If Symptoms Persist, presents direct accounts from key stakeholders in a typical developing nation drug ecosystem.

MPedigree launches its new documentary on the fake drug situation in Ghana, a developing nation also at risk of market flooding from counterfeit medication. The well-attended event was held at the Goethe Institute in Accra, Ghana. Featured were dignitaries from civil, religious and public service sectors. The event ended with a viewing and remarks from key opinion leaders.

For peddling just over fourteen thousand counterfeit Viagra pills via an Internet pharmacy, a manager of a Shanghai chemical company has been sent to jail with a fine. How can the ill effects of his actions be quantitatively measured? Fragmented delivery networks and consumer abstraction make credible statistics on the effects of illicit trade hard to come by.

One challenging feature of many anti-fake drug campaigns is the lack of quick, scientifically sound, low-cost techniques to determine drug genuineness. MPedigree welcomes technological innovations that empower regulators and law enforcement agencies to rapidly test drugs. As such methods mature, we can only hope that the innovators stay a step ahead of the counterfeiters.

As the realities of RFID implementation are made more conspicuous, the State of California in the USA has (for the second time) relaxed the rollout schedule for the technologically-challenged ePedigree initiative. This casts significant doubt on the viability of the solution for developing nations - the ones at ground zero of the fake drug epidemic.

Ghana's pharmaceutical regulators, the Food and Drugs Board (FDB), has recently stepped up its anti-counterfeit public awareness efforts via frequent press releases. Recently, counterfeit aphrodisiacs labeled as "USA Viagra, Viagra 100% Supper Man, Power 007, Man's Gold, Special Effects and Supper Overlord" have found their way to the market. These drugs were not registered nor inspected by the FDB and hence could pose significant health risks. Stepped up enforcement and appropriately chosen technology form a highly potent anti-counterfeit measure.

Product recalls remain a largely expensive and brand damaging affair for both developing and developed nations. With increased awareness about manufacturer product liability obligations and basic consumer rights in the developing world, it makes business sense for manufacturers to look towards new technology designed with product recalls and liability risk mitigation in mind.

BBC's news desk documents the influence of mobile phones on development prospects in poor countries. Studies have shown a positive correlation between mobile teledensity and GDP growth, thus providing one plausible explanation for the large, relatively unexpected cellular market expansion in the developing world. The article reveals some mobile phone applications heavily patronized by the Global South: money transfers, m-banking, mobile phone rentals and re-charging stations.

MPedigree publishes an article in the Special Presidential Inauguration Issue of the Ghana Pharmacuetical Journal. The article provides insights into mass serialization, Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and global standards and their relevance to a developing nation like Ghana.

The German news portal, Spiegel Online, highlights the grave issue of fake drugs while shedding a sliver of hope via noting some solutions to the problem (including mPedigree). Notable in the writeup is the presence of fake bottled water on the Chinese market. Bottled water is one of the easiest products to counterfeit, posing significant added risks since water is a good solvent, often masking impurities from detection by the basic human senses.

MPedigree wishes to express our profound appreciation to the US National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) for its recent award to the project of a much helpful Advanced E-Team grant.