So what is being done about fake drugs in Ghana?

In addition to providing support for stepped up enforcement by regulators and law enforcement agencies in Ghana, mPedigree has collaboratively developed a mobile-based drug authentication service and validated the concept with a technology trial in Ghana. Read more here.

Well-designed technology can significantly augment the stepped up enforcement and frequent anti-counterfeit press releases carried out by the Food and Drugs Board (Ghanaian regulators). The potential of simple yet non-dupilcable technologies built from the ground up for developing nations has been identified by the WHO via its IMPACT anti-counterfeit initiative:

"Technologies can speed up health results in all sorts of ways," said Dr Howard Zucker, Assistant Director-General for Health Technology and Pharmaceuticals at WHO and Chair of IMPACT. "In the case of anti-counterfeiting, the challenges we face are finding technologies that cannot themselves be counterfeited and transferring them to resource poor settings at an affordable cost. While technology alone cannot solve the problem, some of these solutions could greatly enhance the ability to detect and deter the distribution of counterfeit medicines."