Pharmacy board goes high-tech in war against sale of harmful drugs

The Pharmacy and Poisons Board, that regulates the drugs sector, has launched an online portal that will weed out quacks and curb sale of harmful medicine in the Kenyan market.

Consumers can now report suspected cases of adverse drug reactions or poor quality medicinal products online, and the drugs are traced through the system to the traders selling it.

The online registration platform also tracks trainee pharmacists from medical schools to the time they begin practising, eliminating quacks.

The trainees are first registered when they begin medical courses at accredited institutions with photographs and identification details taken and posted online.

A unique number is given to each student, which will be used throughout his career including seeking of new licences and renewal. The online licences, which members can print or store in soft copy, also have unique bar codes.

Gideon Murimi, the head of ICT at Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) told Digital Business the codes reveal identification details of owners when scanned by bar code readers ‘‘so they are tamper proof.”

Dr Paul Mwaniki, the chair of the Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya said the automated registration platform has enabled the board to ensure that its members are genuine professionals with the required training.

“We can now easily tell from the system the quacks pretending to be pharmacists,” he said.

Previous licences containing the government of Kenya (GOK) logo and practitioners details were easily forged by skilled artists and sold in the black market. Pharmacists interested in setting up chemists also renew licences for their wholesale or retail shops annually online.

These licences now have GPRS co-ordinates of their shops as captured when the drugs outlet was being registered.

“This makes it easy for the board to identify genuine and fake ones when it carries out inspections,” said Mr Murimi, who was part of the team that developed the PPB online portal.

The board is betting on technology to curb fraudulent operators in the sector.

Statistics show that about one in every three chemists operating in the rural and low-income settings do not meet standards of safe pharmaceutical practice.

The situation is expected to improve with the new online portal which will document all drugs, medical devices or herbal medicine sold in the Kenyan market, their efficacy and safety.

Based on existing laws, all new medical products destined for the Kenyan market should be registered and approved by PPB. The drugs, medical devices or herbal medicine are first scrutinised before sale.

The board also assesses research studies done to prove the efficacy and safety of new drugs, before they are sold.

If the new products are yet to be manufactured, PPB inspects the factory and issues good manufacturing practice (GMP) certificates to show that such companies meet required safety standards.

Previously, all these procedures were done manually. As such, records of a single drug would comprise hundreds of documents that took up much storage space at the PPB offices.

The huge volumes of paper documents had forced it to invest in metallic storage containers that filled up its compound. With the automation, all the documents are now available online and can be accessed at the touch of a button.

Previously, the physical files were prone to theft, tampering and destruction.

The online platform has also made it easier for pharmaceutical companies seeking to import or export products, since permits are now issued through the PPB portal.

Minimising delays and addressing trade barriers through the digital platform provides a boost to government’s efforts seeking to promote local and foreign investment in the pharmaceutical industry.

The industry is riding on the back of increased expenditure in healthcare and economic growth over the years.

Harmful drugs

Its current worth of about Sh1.5 billion ($160 million) annually is expected to go up as the industry embraces new technologies and streamlines its processes.

Kenya pharmaceutical industry currently supplies more than 50 per cent of products in the Common Market for Central and Eastern Africa (Comesa) region.

Due to the confidentiality offered by the portal’s Pharmacovigilance Electronic Reporting System, drugs consumers can easily report suspected cases of adverse reactions or poor quality medicinal products.

“We encourage all people with complaints to talk to us through the platform or even our social media pages,” said Mr Murimi.

The feedback, coupled with post-market surveillance conducted by PPB to monitor performance of various medicinal products sold in the country, allows the board to easily detect and terminate licences of harmful products.

Mr Murimi notes that the portal also allows for speedy resolution of conflicts as origins of all pharmaceutical products in the country can easily be traced using the online platform.

“We will know who ordered what and where the products came from,” he said.

The PPB portal is also compatible to mobile devices, especially Android and Apple gadgets.