Texting Service To Fight Counterfeit Malaria Drugs

(Alton/Wikimedia Commons)

HP and African social enterprise mPedigree Network have begun a service to stop counterfeit pharmaceuticals by letting people in Nigeria and Ghana easily check the authenticity of their malaria medication. Counterfeit medicines often contain the wrong quantity of active pharmaceutical ingredients, which can result in illness or death.

With the new service, patients taking a range of medication manufactured by May & Baker Nigeria PLC and the KAMA Group of Ghana can send a free text message to get an instant response as to whether the tablets or syrup bottles they received are genuine.

HP is providing the hosting infrastructure for the service, as well as the security and integrity systems, through its data centers in Frankfurt, Germany. mPedigree Network is providing the business processes for pharmaceutical companies to code their products for the system and to monitor use of genuine and counterfeit drugs.

The HP-mPedigree system assigns a code revealed by scratching off a coating on the drugs’ packaging. The consumer or clinician can then text-message the code to a free short message service (SMS) number to verify the authenticity of the drug. If the drug packaging contains a counterfeit code, the consumer will receive a message alerting them that the pack may be a fake, as well as a phone number to report the incident. The service is funded by the participating pharmaceutical companies.

The World Health Organization estimates that counterfeit drugs constitute about 10 percent of the global drug market and 25 percent of the drug market in developing countries. Use of counterfeit drugs is believe to cause at least 700,000 deaths per year.

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