A report released by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has revealed that secret factories in Morocco are flooding the region with counterfeit medicines, which are smuggled by land, sea, and air to several countries in the continent and are in demand due to their low prices.
The report confirms that the trade in illicit and counterfeit medicines is widespread in West Africa and that its main source comes from clandestine factories in Morocco that market their production by land, air, and sea to Burkina Faso, which also converge smuggling routes from other countries to redistribute goods within the region.
According to the same source, counterfeit medicine traffickers have taken advantage of the low local production of medicines in the region, as well as the lack of supervision and the spread of corruption, to make it a hub for the smuggling of counterfeit medicines, whether related to antimalarials, antivirals or screening tests, because between 20 and 60 percent of these medical products marketed in West Africa are counterfeit, and this figure reaches 80 percent in Burkina Faso and Guinea.
According to the report, the manufacturers of these counterfeit medicines took advantage of the complexity of quality control and tracking of counterfeit products, as well as the “Covid-19” crisis, which led to stock shortages, to increase the consumption of counterfeit products. , which were widely consumed by citizens.
The report explains that the trade in these counterfeit medical products and medicines includes all types of medicines, that this trade generates huge profits, and that they are marketed at prices 30 to 50 percent cheaper than the original medicines.
