Avoiding a Pharmaceutical "Scramble for Africa"

The Indian government is to embark on another generic drugs sales drive in Africa.  The main objective of the aggressive campaign is to persuade African countries not to introduce laws under which (as the Indians see it) some generic drugs will be treated as counterfeit drugs.

Anyone who has travelled widely in Africa will recognise the desperate need for affordable, high quality medicines.  The Indian pharmaceutical industry, with its low cost base and rising quality levels, is well placed to fill that need with good quality, off-patent drugs.  They already have a strong grip on the African pharmaceutical trade, especially in Anglophone countries. China is also waking up to the potential of Africa as an export market for pharmaceuticals.

The problem is that India and China are also major sources of fake medicines.  The European Commission has compiled data from customs seizures, previously reported in the Financial Times, that show India to be the market leader in terms of their share of counterfeit drugs seized in the EU, but I suspect that China is not far behind. The worst fake drugs are shoddy, sub-standard products.  Often made from inert building materials, they may contain toxic impurities and little or no active ingredient.

The grey area is drugs which are copies of someone else's intellectual property.  They may be reasonable quality but are not authorised and therefore could be classed as counterfeit. Africa needs good, cheap medicines but not at any price.  The legitimate Indian generic industry is too often a cover for unscrupulous operators to make quick profits from useless fakes.

The better way forward is for generics to mean just that.  The term should apply to patent-expired products, and makers of generic products should not try to copy the brand attributes (appearance, logo etc) of the original. For their part, multinational drug companies need to do much more to speed up access to their medicines in developing countries.  It is starting to happen but we need more effort.

The great need for medicines means there is room for many pharmaceutical producers in Africa.  However, unless we are careful then the African people will be exploited again in another "land-grab" as competing interests vie to harvest the commercial potential as cheaply as possible.