 Plenary Trusting what we consume: Are we truly managing the interface of technology, health and health and safety FRIDAY 12 OCTOBER 2007
In Nigeria counterfeit goods are responsible for the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people every year. This was the stark message from Dora Akunyili, the Director General of Nigeria’s national Agency for Food and Drug Administration to participants in this plenary session. While many of us perhaps see the problem of counterfeiting as no more serious than buying a few fake designer tee-shirts or handbags while on holiday, Akinyili explained that the reality in Nigeria and many other developing countries is far more deadly. Nigeria is currently suffering from what could legitimately be described as an epidemic of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and these fake drugs are extremely sophisticated. Generally produced in China or India, they are sold in packaging that is often barely distinguishable from genuine medicines. But they are produced with no controls, which means that they almost systematically do not contain the pharmaceutical substances they claim to. In concrete terms, this means that an antibiotic that claims to contain 200 milligrams of a given substance could only contain 20 milligrams. In such a case someone who believes they are taking medication that will rid them of an infection caused by a particular strain of bacteria may actually be ensuring that that bacteria becomes ever stronger and more resistant to treatment. “The most frightening thing is resistance,” said Akunyili. The Food and Drug Administration director argued that the only way to tackle the problem of counterfeit pharmaceuticals was to draft a binding international agreement that would ensure the companies and criminal networks producing illicit products could be pursued and prosecuted, wherever in the world they operated. “I would like to see an international agreement on counterfeit drugs,” Akunyili said. She added that it would be an error to argue that counterfeit drugs were solely a problem for the developing world. Both the USA and the UK had both recently seen criminals arrested for producing fake prescription pharmaceuticals, she pointed out. “Drug counterfeiting is carried out by transnational criminal networks and it will not be eradicated without international cooperation. Why don’t we have an international convention on this issue?” she asked. Daniela Rosche, policy co-ordinator with Women in Europe for a Common Future agreed that it was vital that consumers could have confidence in the everyday products they bought. The problem of counterfeit pharmaceuticals did not affect consumers in Western Europe in the same way as their counterparts in Nigeria, she argued. But there was nevertheless a crisis in consumer confidence in many of the European Union’s 27 member states. People had been spooked by a series of health scares linked to chemical products used in many common consumer goods, she said. For example, suggestions that plastic softening agents called phthalates could cause defects in the development of children’s’ sexual organs had sparked a serious health scare in recent years, she explained. For many years phthalates had been used in the manufacture of children’s teething toys or the teats of baby bottles, for example, she said. “This problem is a hidden time bomb,” she argued. In recent years the EU had tried to take the problem of dangerous substances in everyday consumer goods seriously, she explained. The new European regulation on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) represented a potentially important step forward in this area, she argued. REACH for the first time reversed the burden of proof when it came to approving the safety of thousands of chemical products sold or used within the EU. Before the new law entered into force in June 2007, the onus was on national authorities to prove that given chemical substances were dangerous. Today, the companies that produce or use these products must show that they are safe. However, Rosche argued that the new legislation was not nearly as stringent as it could be. “The law has been watered down so much that we wonder if it will have any effect at all,’ she complained, referring to the fact that the final version of the REACH legislation was significantly altered in the wake of sustained lobbying by the chemicals industry. But Rosche nevertheless insisted that companies had a key role to play in ensuring the products they sold were safe. “Governments can frame laws but companies have to set the standards. It is quite simply an ethical and moral issue,” she said. ___________________________________ |