Fake insulins causing more sufferings to many

DESPITE the irregular crackdown on adulterated drugs, the business of illicit, substandard, counterfeit and life-endangering medicines is becoming rampant enough to pose a severe public health danger in the country. A New Nation report on Thursday said fake insulin injections, a life-saving hormone for diabetic patients, have flooded the medicine market. In our observation, lack of law enforcement and absence of proper methods to verify the drugs’ originality make the adulteration of drugs easy and subsequent marketing and consumption by ordinary people. The government’s Drug Administration is technically too ill-equipped to screen out fake drugs from the widespread marketing outlets. The government can, if it wishes, stop the counterfeiting of drugs in the embryonic stage and award punishment to the guilty. But the moot problem is that the government lacks the will to do good to the people.

With the increase of diabetic patients, the demand for insulin injections is soaring up across the country. The insulin market in the country is basically occupied by Danish and US companies while only a small fraction is filled by the local companies. The unscrupulous traders take this opportunity by smuggling fake insulin from bordering countries and labelling it as original one. As the foreign companies do not advertise their products in the local media and several business houses import the insulin, nobody feels the responsibility to make people aware. Without the comparison between fake and original, it is certainly impossible for the ordinary people to identify which medicine is forged, and which is original. Rural people, who are unaware, often become victims of the adulterated medicines and insulin injections. As telecommunication is cheap and widespread in the country, it is not difficult to initiate a verifying system by the manufacturers, importers or the drug administration. The life-endangering unethical acts not only cheat people but also take life or complicate health.

Insulin is not the only product which is adulterated most, according to the drug makers, an estimated Tk 600 crore of counterfeit medicines are traded in the Tk 18,000 crore medicine market in Bangladesh each year. Amid this miserable situation, we hope, the tech-savy enterprises will provide an effective solution to the cumbersome issue of monitoring drug markets. Thankfully, two local companies have introduced SMS-based authentication service in the country and several mobile apps also provide the image of original drugs though the apps are not popular to all.

In this regard, all the major drug manufacturers should be brought on board by the Health Ministry. Besides, the government should take all-out steps to stop entry of adulterated insulin by tightening borders security and thus preventing the entering of fake medicines and compel insulin importers to develop an easy-to-access verifying method and continue the crackdown on medicine markets to make the market trustworthy.