Student Pharmacists in Ghana Urged to Help Prevent Use of Counterfeit Drugs

Student pharmacists in Ghana were urged to accept work in rural communities to help ensure that people are not taking counterfeit drugs.

In a speech to the Ghana Pharmaceutical Students Association, young pharmacists listened to a series of speeches entitled "Promoting National Growth and Development through the Campaign against Counterfeit Drugs, Ensuring Improved Rational Use of Medicines and Healthy Lifestyles," according to the Ghana News Agency.

Dr Benjamin Kunbour, Ghana’s Minister of Health, had a speech read on his behalf to students that emphasized the importance of ridding the country of counterfeit drugs.

"Counterfeit medicines are very dangerous and detrimental to public health in terms of human suffering and burden on the health services,” he said. "In this regard it is the policy of the ministry of health to rid the national drug distribution channels of counterfeit or fake drugs.

Countefeit drugs are extremely dangerous as they can contain a number of deadly ingredients. In 1998, more than 400 people died in Nigeria, Haiti and Bangladesh from taking a counterfeit medication that was treated with a solvent used in wallpaper remover.