We’ve discovered manufacturers who fake their own drugs —NAFDAC DG

Director-General of the National Agency for Food, Drugs Administration and Control, (NAFDAC), Dr. Paul Orhii, has said that his agency has discovered that some drug manufacturers fake their own drugs, ostensibly to make financial gains.
Dr. Orhii, who made the disclosure during an interview, said that such manufacturers even turn around to report to NAFDAC that some persons were counterfeiting their drugs.
According to him, such manufacturers target heavy financial gains which they ordinarily will not make by sticking to the rules and making genuine drugs.
Besides the companies that fake their own products for direct financial gains, Orhii also said that some manufacturers hide the true figure of their imports so as to evade tax.
He, however, said that measures put in place by NAFDAC including the introduction of pin numbers on products have helped to close the avenues exploited by such unscrupulous manufacturers.
He said that the pin numbers have not only been good for the government adding that “Apart from that, for NAFDAC, it is very efficient because some people were counterfeiting their own medicine.”
He further explained: “It is very simple. Somebody comes to NAFDAC to register a medicine, he gets the medicine from a source and comes to NAFDAC, we go and inspect that source with good manufacturing facilities; of course because there is high brand manufacturing facilities there, the cost of production will be higher.
“So, they bring the medicine and we test everything and it is fine and we approve it. Then they will order one consignment from that source, they keep in one warehouse, and then take a sample to another source that is not so good and twice or three times cheaper than the real medicine. Then they manufacture the fake one but the packaging looks exactly the same, then they come back and report to NAFDAC and show NAFDAC that ‘somebody is faking our drugs’ and fetching us out of business.”
 According to him, the said manufacturer would simply tell NAFDAC if the fake drugs were discovered that he had reported it to the agency before hand.
 He further said that there are some manufacturers who want to evade tax on their medicines.
“There are people who want to evade taxes on their medicines. Somebody who imports maybe three million cartons of a particular medicine can just declare that it is one million,” he said.
He, however, stated that with the new measures put in place by NAFDAC, such pranks are no longer feasible.
“But (now) if you want three million cartons, you have to request from NAFDAC three million pin numbers, because if you request for only one million and the two million cartons are not protected, people will reject them. So, it is very easy for the Federal Government to just come to us and ask how many pin numbers did you give out for this medicine and we tell and you go and get you taxes.”
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