Campaign against spurious drugs

The reported marketing of counterfeit and low-quality medicines in the country's rural areas is indeed a matter of serious health concern. Whatever good international rating in rural healthcare Bangladesh has achieved is, as a report in this paper in its last Tuesday's issue indicates, poised to be set at naught unless such spurious drugs are seized and the guilty vendors are punished under the laws of the land. Thousands of pharmacies in rural markets, still outside surveillance of the Directorate of Drug Administration (DDA), get medicines from vendors who in collusion with some manufacturers allegedly sell such drugs.
Rural people, without finding qualified doctors nearby, just visit the pharmacies and take drugs usually prescribed by quakes and druggists running the businesses. The shortage of qualified doctors and standard clinics in rural areas also forces patients to purchase over-the-counter drugs sans a prescription. This helps fake drug vendors to thrive.  But the spurious drugs do take its toll on rural population. Such medicines - slow but silent killers - damage important organs, but people who are taking them do not realise it. Traders in fake and counterfeit medicines, on the other hand, are so powerful that they had once staged a one-day strike in the main medicine sales hub Mitford in Dhaka and most pharmacies nationwide in October 2013, protesting against the government crackdown on spurious drugs. The police personnel and members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) seized some Tk 52 million worth of fake, substandard and unauthorised medicines from Mitford alone. About 100 people were detained and nearly 30 shops were closed down following that crackdown.
Unscrupulous traders in fact earn large profits by selling outlawed medication supplied by rogue companies at a low cost. It is possible to make the profit twice as much by selling counterfeit and sub-standard medicines. Some of the vendors do also sell fake medicines unknowingly. The Business Monitor International, a market research firm, in a survey on Bangladesh, found that about 9.0 per cent of sales of medicines are linked to spurious drugs. At the same time, adulterated or fake versions of medication are more popular in rural areas where cost is a factor.
The Public Health and Drug Testing Laboratory, the country's testing authority, had once tested 5,000 medicine samples from across the country and found that 300 of those - 6.0 per cent - were either counterfeit or of substandard quality. In 2014, the local media reported that the same laboratory finding had earlier shown that the percentage of counterfeit or 'very poor quality' drugs had doubled, basing on the results of a 2,500 drug sample-test. Drugs failing the test included popular antibiotics and lifesaving ones.
It is now urgent that the DDA recruit more manpower and open more of its branches to extend its swoop in different districts and sub-districts step by step.  It is unfortunate that the Directorate now has only 25 branches across the country and boasts a staff of only 80 drug superintendents and inspectors. But the magnitude of the problem is so vast and serious that the DDA with its present strength can in no way cope with the situation. Arrest of the culprits trading in human miseries and exemplary punishment through legal means brook no delay. Also, stepped-up campaign for public awareness of the dangerous situation is badly needed.