FDB seizes unregistered drugs(MP12/5/09)

THE Food and Drugs Board (FDB) and the Ghana Police Service yesterday seized large quantities of unregistered drugs at the Okaishie Market in a special exercise to rid the Accra metropolis of fake and illegal medications.
The drugs included aphrodisiacs, slimming teas, as well as breast and hip enlargement products mostly made in China and Korea.
Notable among the aphrodisiacs were “3 days 3 centimetres”, “Man sex fancy soap”, “Golden power”, “African Viagoura”, “Super omega”, “Black God” and “Spain black butterfly”.
Other products had their names and inscriptions written in Chinese, which is an infringement of the Legislative Instrument 1541 of the Ghana Standards Board which demands that all products sold in the country should have English inscriptions to enable people to read them.
The Head of the Post-Market Surveillance Unit of the Drug Inspectorate Department of the FDB, Mr Eugene Addo, said there was a proliferation of those unregistered drugs on the Ghanaian market, hence the exercise.
He said the quality, efficacy and safety of the drugs could not be established because they had not been registered and tested by the FDB.
He said that some of the drugs, particularly the aphrodisiacs, had effects on the human heart, since they made people work more than necessary.
He said some of the products had also been mislabelled and given different names to deceive the public.
“A product like Diclofenac 25mg, which is a pain killer to be sold under prescription by doctors, has been labelled as moringa tablets and is being sold to deceive the public,” Mr Addo stated.
He advised the public to desist from using such drugs, since they were fake and could cause cancer and death.
He called on the various stakeholders to help to rid the market of those unregistered drugs which posed serious threats to health.
The traders refused to disclose the identity of their suppliers.