ILLICIT TRADE IN, AND CONSUMPTION OF PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS POSE A VERITABLE HEALTH HAZARD IN CAMEROON

It is not in  any way a mystery, that the average person living in Cameroon feels very much more at ease, purchasing and consuming drugs, more often than not ill-prescribed by self-proclaimed, uncertified medical practitioners, whose work environment happens to be the streets or provisional structures. For the common trend is that Governments’ action against unauthorized imported drugs lay emphasis on so-called repression rather than on prevention.

It is an all too familiar scenario: a huge quantity of pharmaceutical products, described as illegally imported, including banned substances, set on fire in public, under the glare of local authorities. While governments’ action may underscore their concern for the health of the population, one is nevertheless bound to ask why it is reactive, rather than proactive. The destroyed pharmaceutical products comprise counterfeit, uncertified and unlicensed drugs, which leaves one with no choice but to ask, how the drugs found themselves in the wrong places in the wrong hands? How come the drugs were smuggled across the borders undetected by the competent customs, security and health authorities; and how come fake drugs are discovered when they are already in circulation, only after the collateral damage has been done?                                                                                                      Admittedly, the drug manufacture and trafficking industry the world over is a gigantic labyrinth, kept burgeoning by concerned parties, who use money or other means to beat and circumvent the porous control mechanisms put in place. And so these drugs find their way into a thriving black market, and when believed to be acceptable and affordable enough, is scrambled for by a gullible and poverty-stricken population. This explains the population’s strong preference for the roadside drug seller or the itinerant drug dealer, given especially that available pharmacies and other certified sales points are so few and far-between, unevenly distributed, often found inexplicably wanting and of course, perceived as generally expensive.                                                                                                                                                    But even more disturbing is the fact that hospitals and official sources are known to harbor drugs labeled illegal, for Government structures put up to clamp down on, and regulate the sector, do little or nothing to mitigate the situation, for the cankerworm that corruption is, has eaten deep into the fabric of such structures, reducing them to nothing more than dysfunctional bodies and toothless bulldogs.                                                                                                                   However these governments, as the gatekeepers to all aspects of the lives of their citizens, must all perk up and remain on the alert, and all the more so as insecurity in this part of the continent becomes ever more present and preoccupying; this by tightening the loose bolts in the drug control and administration chain, and ensuring that drug manufacture and distribution is channeled through a rigorously meticulous overseeing pathway, because a contraband drug found in the conventional distribution chain is a deadly poison, given the poor conditions under which they are conserved, above recommended temperatures and in direct sunlight.                                                                                                         

As laudable as the move to destroy such drugs might be, it does not lay to rest the question burning on the mind of the pondering observer:  who answers for the damage inflicted to an all too ignorant population, often irreparable or even fatal? When illicit drugs are let dangerously on the loose in society, their toxic effects can only lead to an unhealthy, unsafe, and unwholesome citizenry.               I expect to see governments that have had as slogan “health for all”, more inclined to prevention rather than repression, in the crusade against fake drugs, for a well-known dictum says “prevention is better than cure”.

Louisa Akwanka