Anticounterfeiting Strategies of Local Drug Manufacturers in Lagos, Nigeria: Implications for Public Health.

BACKGROUND: Nigeria has been plagued by counterfeit and poor quality medicines with several studies indicating varying degree of prevalence. Thus, this study is aimed at determining the anticounterfeiting strategies employed by local drug manufacturers in Lagos-Nigeria.

METHOD: The first phase was a descriptive study which involves the use of a self-administered closed ended structured questionnaire to assess the anticounterfeiting strategies employed by local manufacturers in Nigeria. The second phase was an experimental study which involves selection of two classes of most frequently faked drugs identified by the respondents in the first phase. The selected drugs were then subjected to spot checks using the truscan analysis deployed by NAFDAC to identify counterfeit medicine. Anticounterfeiting features on the samples were also examined.  The data obtained from phase one were analyzed using SPSS and the data obtained from phase two were entered into the truscan data sheet and analyzed using Chi-squared and ANOVA. Results were considered to be significant at P-value ≤ 0.05.

RESULTS: The outcome of the study showed that 83% and 78% of antimalarials drawn from the manufacturing sources and open market respectively passed the truscan spot checks. Similarly, 50% of antibiotics drawn from the two sampling sites passed the truscan checks. There was no significant difference (p ≥ 0.05) between the sampled antimalarials and antibiotics from the manufacturing sources and open market.

CONCLUSION: The current rate of counterfeit medicines is relatively low. Strategies to encourage the use of combination of anticounterfeiting technologies by the manufacturers should be established.