Several children confirmed dead in Gambia after taking cough Syrup. According to the WHO and UN health agency the cough syrup linked to the death of 66 children contains unacceptable amounts of toxic chemicals.

Similar to this is a recent incident of fake Tetracyline, a popular antibiotic used in Nigeria and other west African countries. The Tetracycline incident captured on video, was the consumer opening the red and yellow capsule to empty its content with audible voice heard explaining how ingesting the Pill always leave a taste similar to cooking spice and fatality was recorded.

“Counterfeiting medication is very profitable for criminals. They take advantage of the good reputation of products and brands that original manufacturers established through its consistently high quality products” according to Bayer.

The production and manufacture of counterfeit drugs do not follow standard operating procedures(SOP), proper Pharmacological practices nor do they comply with regulatory guidelines. They instead produce look-alike in physical appearance, but their content ingredient lack effectiveness to treat the expected illness and may include contamination or toxic content.

Anything that makes money will be counterfeited. Pharmaceutical brands and products that make money are vulnerable to counterfeits and this implies all consumers are susceptible to exposure. Since new drugs cost approximately 1Billion dollars or more from research to approval, Fraudsters can only create counterfeit mimicking its aesthetics most times.

Fraudsters are actively looking for products that have huge market demands for example Anti-biotic, Anti-hypertensive, generics or relatively expensive such as drugs used to treat AIDS, cancer therapy and many other popular chronic diseases.

Government agencies need ways to keep up with rate of counterfeit incidences using state-of-the-art Technology that allows cross collaboration with other stakeholders and such solutions must be scalable and dynamic, adaptive and conform to the law of Requisite variety.

Validproof works with key supply chain stakeholders to fight the prevalence of fake and substandard drugs in African countries. Enforcement agencies, manufacturers and other supply chain stakeholders have tried several ways for decades, and alternative solutions have failed or become compromised due to sophisticated Counterfeits.

Control or regulation is most fundamentally formulated as a reduction of variety: perturbations with high variety affect the system’s internal state. Summarily, that part of the system with the greatest flexibility of behaviour will control the system. — law of Requisite variety.

Validproof is combining electromagnetic protocol with digital twins to help eliminate fake drugs and substandard medicine. Deep technology solutions and sophisticated innovation is required to solve the long standing fake drug problem. Simply because counterfeiters are always steps ahead exploiting every vulnerability there is to advance their activities.

The future of safe access to drugs and Pharmaceutical products depends on technology enhanced supervision and control to make regulation effective and productive. Empowering enforcement agencies with agile tools that is flexible and rapid at beating new ways and waves of counterfeit and other substandard products.