Bad Drugs in market, admits Board

The Pharmacy and Poisons Board has admitted to the presence of drugs in the Kenyan market that have not been registered or have failed the requisite tests by the National Quality Control Laboratory.
According to Dr Kipkerich Kosgey, the registrar at PPB, more than 20 pharmaceutical firms have failed the Good Manufacturing Practices tests carried out by the government agency.


Of these, 13 are local firms, of which three- Gesto Pharmaceuticals, Aesthetics and Novelty- are "as good as closed" after they were found continuously flouting the laws on the manufacture of drugs.
Dr Kosgey also told Parliament's Health Committee that the report of the Efficiency Monitoring Unit that highlighted the presence of the bad medicine in the market had inconsistencies.
But he also admitted to a series of errors at the PPB where drugs that had failed the tests for quality had been registered and others that had passed were not.

In one of the cases, involving three varieties of Malmed-fed where one had failed the tests for quality, Dr Kosgey said the faulty batch had been recalled from the market.
"This kind of mix-up will never occur as SIAMED software will automatically reject products of similar trade names unless they are of different strengths," he said.

He said before March 2010, only those drugs described as risky products-antibiotics, injectables, anti-malarials, anti-TB and ARVs, used to undergo tests before registration.
He said the adoption of a Common Technical Document had resulted in the changes that made it necessary for all medicines to be tested before they are registered.
The EMU report had also identified the Eldoret International Airport as the major entry point for bad drugs, and Dr Kosgey said three officers have since been posted there to guard against this practice.
He said since their posting, three containers of bad drugs were seized enroute to the country and later destroyed.
But Dr Kosgey and his team ran into trouble with the committee when he failed to offer documentary evidence to support his arguments, leading chairman Dr Robert Monda and MPs Dr Abdi Nuh and Fred Outa to question their veracity.
The committee eventually kicked out PPB's legal officer Dr Joseph Yano after he appeared to object to their queries, at one point accusing them of "questioning everything."
Dr Yano accused the committee of harassing him and left with a promise to the MPs that they would meet at another time, and he would be in Parliament and they would not.
The PPB Board is expected back at the committee later this month, with the committee requiring that they provide the drugs registration process and the laws that guide their work.
Dr Nuh said the board would also need to provide the letters of closure or suspension issued to firms as well as lists of firms tested for Good Manufacturing Processes as well as the certificates issued.