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Shoppers buy smuggled counterfeit drugs

Sharleen Mohammed Review Correspondent—

In downtown Harare, Mercy, a mother of one child stands behind a makeshift cardboard stand at the corner of Robert Mugabe Road and Julius Nyerere Way.On top of her stand are wild fruits Masau. Most people who pass her think that is her trade, but she is one of Harare’s growing antibiotics vendors.

She recommends drugs and describes how to take them, though she admits she cannot read most of what is written on the packaging.

“I have regular clients coming to buy these antibiotics here. They have to trust my products,” said Mercy.

There is a booming business in the trade of antibiotics, vendors practising their trade in city streets and high density suburbs, selling pharmaceuticals, often counterfeit or substandard, at reduced rates.

While education campaigns seek to inform the public of the risks of taking substandard drugs, poverty gets in the way.

As opposed to established pharmacies, vendors often offer lower prices and will sell a single dose rather than having to buy a course of treatment all at once.

With pills flooding the streets of Harare, it is the duty of the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe to safeguard public health by ensuring that medicines and medical devices on the market are safe, effective and of good quality.

According to the Zimbabwe Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Report Q3 2015 the outlook of modest growth for Zimbabwe’s pharmaceutical sector should be treated with caution as poor monitoring and recording practices along with the country’s reliance on aid from various sources make market figures unreliable.

A lack of awareness among consumers and the casual attitude of a large section of physicians have turned many lifesaving “antibiotic” drugs into a secret silent killer.

Director of Epidemiology and Disease Control in the Ministry of Health and Child Care Dr Portia Manangazira said antibiotics are designed to cure or prevent infections, if not properly handled, the bacterium survives and continues to multiply, causing more harm.

“Doctors prescribe antibiotics unnecessarily and patients failing to completely eliminate infections by not finishing antibiotic courses. The problem is worsened by giving bacteria a chance to develop resistance,” explained Dr Mananganzira.

“Doctors are then left with fewer treatment options, meaning that patients take longer to recover or are less likely to survive,” she added.

Paul Gomba, a pharmacy technician at a Central Hospital, revealed that a pharmacist is trained to dispense drugs and not to prescribe as they do nowadays to make a profit.

Many of the drugs on sale are substandard or fake.

However, according to the World health organisation (WHO) it is not only the sellers for whom it is natural to not know about the evils of overuse or over-dosage of antibiotics. Even doctors in many cases do not hesitate to prescribe high-power antibiotics even for the simplest of complaints, such as colds and fevers.

“The resultant situation is nothing short of alarming as a consequence of overuse of antibiotics. Many species of micro-organisms which cause lethal diseases in the human body and are supposed to be neutralised by the antibiotics have developed resistance to these drugs.

The WHO has outlined a target to treat 80 percent of all multi-drug-resistant (MDR) cases but right now less than three percent receive proper treatment.

Five percent of all cases of drug resistance are considered extensively drug-resistant, meaning patients do not respond to first-line and second-line drugs. Many labs are unable to even detect and diagnose this form of the disease.

Those who run drug stores often do not hesitate to sell antibiotics without prescriptions, either because they are not concerned or trained well enough, or, at times, are too concerned about making profits.

According Pintrest — The world’s catalog of ideas, in 1928, Scottish biologist Sir Alexander Fleming invented penicillin, the first antibiotic that was widely used for the treatment of complex diseases such as syphilis.

A number of different studies have also hinted at the same predicament, suggesting that the indiscriminate and uncontrolled use of antibiotics has led to antimicrobial resistance.

Health professionals said surgery patients had to be given antibiotics because operating theatres in various hospitals in the country were not fully infection-free and surgery wounds would not heal without antibiotics.