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Kenya employs cutting-edge mobile phone anti-counterfeiting technology

With growing bandwidth availability and the increasing popularity of mobile phones among consumers, the Kenyan government endorses the mPedigree platform to battle pharmaceutical counterfeiting.

Kenya_mobile_phone
Kenya_mobile_phone

The World Health Organization estimated that 50% of medicines could be counterfeits in Africa and Asia. In an effort to counter potential counterfeit medicines, Biofem Pharmaceuticals recently began a trial in Nigeria that employs Sproxil’s Mobile Authentication ServiceTM for authentication of packs of Merck’s Glucophage diabetes drug. Sproxil also supplied the photo shown here.

In this article, the Kenya News Agency reports on how the African country is launching a mobile phone application to fight counterfeit medicines.

 Edited by Jim Butschli, Editor, Healthcare Packaging

Kenya has begun piloting a system that will make it possible for consumers to use text messages to find out if a particular medicine is legitimate or counterfeit, said Kenyan minister for Medical Services, Professor Anyang Nyong. The system is designed to prevent Kenyans from falling prey to fake medicines, which have begun flooding markets in East Africa.

Even though similar systems have been tried in Ghana and more recently in Nigeria, this is believed to be the first time the use of such an approach, known as the mPedigree platform, has been endorsed at cabinet level in any country in the world.

Speaking at the ongoing mHealth Africa 2010 conference in Accra, Ghana, Dec. 2-3, one of the promoters of the platform, Franklin Cudjoe, of the World Economic Forum, said that the platform has been embraced by major pharmaceutical brands and will therefore be replicated across Africa.

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