E-DRUG: SMS texting and drug quality in West Africa
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West African Innovation Hits Global Stage
At 12:30 p.m. on May 6, Ampem Dankwah sends a cell-phone message from
the lobby of a downtown cafe in Accra, Ghana: "GH4F9H84B4." His text
opens a front in the war on sham malaria drugs.
Within 1.2 seconds, Dankwah's transmission is routed to a
Hewlett-Packard Co. data center in Galway, Ireland, where a computer
verifies the code and responds, "OK." It is the first test of a system
developed by HP and Dankwah's employer, mPedigree Network Ltd., to help
millions of Africans avoid counterfeit malaria pills with little or no
active medicine, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its May 17 issue.
Under the plan, legitimate drugs will come with a scratch-off panel
hiding 10 digits. Consumers will send the code to a widely advertised
number, and receive a reply confirming or disputing the product's
authenticity. The system is designed to detect fakes that in some
African nations make up half the drugs sold for malaria, a
mosquito-borne disease that is the single greatest killer of African
children, according to the William J. Clinton Foundation in New York.
"A big advantage of it is that it empowers the consumer," said Paul
Newton, a Vientiane, Laos-based researcher from the U.K.'s University of
Oxford who studies counterfeit drugs. Pharmaceutical makers may welcome
the development "because it would increase public confidence in
medicines," Newton said in a telephone interview.
HP plans to sign a contract with mPedigree within the next month, said
Mick Keyes, a senior official in HP's chief technology office. The two
companies intend to introduce the system with malaria pills in Ghana and
Nigeria by December, and may expand later to Kenya, Tanzania, Liberia,
Benin and Uganda.
Glaxo, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis
GlaxoSmithKline Plc is also "in discussions with mPedigree on the
feasibility of this technology," said Stephen Rea, a spokesman for the
London-based drugmaker, in an e-mail. mPedigree and HP are talking to
three other "major" pharmaceutical makers about participating, said
Bright Simons, co-founder and owner of mPedigree, declining to identify
them. Sanofi-Aventis SA, based in Paris, and Basel, Switzerland-based
Novartis AG, which are among the biggest makers of antimalarials,
declined to comment.
Malaria strikes almost 250 million people each year - and kills about
880,000, almost nine-tenths of whom are African children under 5 years
old, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organization. About 45
million courses of fake antimalarials, valued at $438 million, are
trafficked to West Africa from China and India annually by rogue
manufacturers, the United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime said in a
report last year.
'Particularly Relevant'
The use of mobile phones to combat counterfeits is "particularly
relevant for Africa in the short-run, given the urgency to deal with
counterfeits already in the market while stronger regulatory capacity is
built," said Guy Willis, a spokesman for the International Federation of
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations, based in Geneva, in an
e-mail. The group's members include New York-based Pfizer Inc., the
world's biggest drug company.
Under the Hewlett-Packard plan, about 125,000 packs of malaria drugs
will be labeled with random codes. If it works, the six-month program
may be expanded to cover more drugs. Fake malaria and tuberculosis
products alone are linked to about 700,000 deaths annually, the
International Policy Network, a London-based nonprofit organization,
said in a May 2009 report.
That's "the equivalent of four fully laden jumbo jets crashing every
day," the group said in a statement then.
A pilot system, not involving Hewlett-Packard's data center, was tested
by mPedigree in a 2008 trial involving bottles of acetaminophen, a
pain-killing syrup for children made by Ghana's Amponsah Efah
Pharmaceutical Ltd. All 3,000 customers who bought the syrup sent in the
code, Simons said.
'Criminal Offense'
"If a consumer gets a NO message it is clear indication that the
pharmacy outlet is selling fake medicines," Simons said. "That is a
criminal offence. Most pharmacy attendants will quickly and pleadingly
replace the drug and give hell to whoever higher up the chain sold them
the drug."
Zain
Zain, a telephone company with headquarters in Manama, Bahrain, will
provide the phone service for the mPedigree program, said Beverlyne
Mudeshi, Zain's manager of corporate social responsibility, in an
e-mail. mPedigree expects to sign a contract with Zain this week, Simons
said in an e-mail. Zain's service will be accessible to consumers
regardless of what carriers they use for everyday calls, he said.
Posters, Radio
Zain and mPedigree plan to market the program through posters in
pharmacies, text messages and radio advertisements, and through
drugmakers' own ads, Simons said.
Drugmakers will pay for the system through a subscription fee, which
mPedigree will share with Zain and Hewlett-Packard, Simons said. His
five-employee company, based in Accra, wrote and owns the software that
generates the codes and enables the Zain and HP systems to communicate.
Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, California, will maintain the data
centers that hold and confirm codes, Keyes said. The company also plans
to use the system to generate supply-chain information that will help
drugmakers know where their products are. Keyes declined to say how much
HP is investing in the program.
"We have talked to a number of the pharmaceutical companies," Keyes said
in a telephone interview from Dublin. "They like the model. For them it
means they will have to provide us with certain amounts of information,
rather than invest heavily in large systems and costly systems in-house
themselves."
Dozens of companies, such as Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. of Waltham,
Massachusetts, are developing anti-counterfeiting technologies, among
them holograms, barcodes and invisible ink.
Mobile phones are simpler and cheaper, said Patrick Lukulay, director of
drug quality and information for the United States Pharmacopeial
Convention, a Rockville, Maryland-based nonprofit organization that
tracks counterfeits. "In a low-tech, resource-limited environment it's
very effective, because it's using a technology that millions of people
have access to," Lukulay said.
(Modified for length from an original Bloomberg story by Simeon Bennett
on May 14 2010 by Richard Akuoko)
The original version was produced with assistance from Naomi Kresge in
Zurich, Trista Kelley in.
London. Editors: Jeffrey Tannenbaum, Michael Waldholz.
5/15/2010