Femi Soremekun, managing director of Nigeria-based Biofem Pharmaceuticals, is all too familiar with the fight against counterfeit drugs. In late 2008, a distributor notified him that he suspected that one of Biofem’s products, Glucophage, was being counterfeited. After checking batch and inventory numbers, Soremekun reassured him there was no evidence of such activity. It was only after more allegations surfaced that he sent a sample to French manufacturer Merck & Co. to be analyzed. Turns out the claims were correct. “I was very shocked,” Soremekun says. “[The counterfeiters] got into my market, counterfeited my product, and I wasn’t even aware of it. I was losing sales.”
It was around this time that Soremekun learned about Sproxil, a start-up company that is part of a consortium that includes Nigeria’s pharmaceutical industry association and the country’s regulating agency. The group explores technology-based strategies to tackle drug counterfeiting. On the sidelines of the consortium, Biofem and Sproxil discussed implementing a drug-certification process in order to restore Biofem customers’ confidence in Glucophage. Following a successful five-month trial in Nigeria involving about one million units of Biofem’s product, the company has seen sales pick up again. “We ended up being called the guinea pig,” Soremekun jokes.
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Every four years, the world’s biggest sporting event captures the attention of football aficionados. The FIFA World Cup is more than just a soccer competition, though. For host countries such as South Africa, the tournament represents a chance to showcase the nation’s treasures, attract investments, and beguile tourists. For the creators of the 1Goal campaign, the World Cup offers a unique opportunity to develop the organization's largest-ever cause-related campaign. 1Goal, which is backed by FIFA, seeks to get every child into school by 2015.
1Goal was founded by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a coalition of more than 100 organizations from over 100 countries that has been coordinating advocacy, research and lobbying activities to end what GCE refers to as “the global education crisis.” The 1Goal campaign also benefits from serious star power, with co-chairs Queen Rania of Jordan, FIFA president Sepp Blatter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu lending their weight and global profile to the campaign.
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The human and economic cost of malaria in Nigeria is staggering. There are currently 110 million clinically diagnosed cases in a population of 151 million. Malaria kills 250,000 children under five years old in Nigeria every year, and is the cause of 11% of maternal deaths. 60% of out-patient visits and 30% of hospitalizations in the country are malaria-related.
In addition to the enormous toll malaria takes on public health, it is also expensive. 132 billion Naira (USD $870 million) is lost every year in the form of malaria prevention and treatment costs and from the loss of overall economic productivity.
And yet in spite of the risk malaria poses to the Nigerian people, health surveys from 2006 to 2008 indicated that only 8% of households in the country owned at least one insecticide-treated net (So-called ITNs).
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