EuroAfrica-Magazine Online

The World Health Organization estimates up to 30 per cent of pharmaceutical drugs sold in developing countries are counterfeit. mPedigree, a one-year-old company based in Accra, Ghana is set to expand a text messaging service aimed at ousting counterfeit drugs in Ghana. Under the proposed move, consumers will be able to verify whether the medicines they buy are genuine by sending a free text message to the manufacturer, who will reply within minutes. Bright Simons, one of the founders of the mPedigree company, said until now anti-counterfeit tactics have not empowered the consumer, and they have no way of verifying their medication’s safety. Last year 3000 people sent messages in a pilot scheme. They received replies from manufacturers in an average of three minutes. Alarmed by growing rates of pharmaceutical fraud, Bright Simons and a small team launched the effort, this is how it started: I learned about a study in 2001 in which an estimated 190,000 Chinese people died from various pharmaceutical abuses in that year alone.

I wondered if these fake and substandard drugs were making their way to China’s trading partners in Africa. More and more, the evidence suggested that a lot of the counterfeit drugs in West Africa originated in China, the Far East, and South Asia.A number of my colleagues who were involved in technology abroad were also interested in the subject and in doing something to contribute to the life of ordinary citizens in Ghana. Eventually myself and my Dartmouth colleague made the leap of relocating to Ghana, from our Diasporan perches, to do something with our passion for social innovation. In 2007, we started mPedigree with seed capital from the US.

mPedigree is one of 34 companies listed by the World Economic Forum as Technology Pioneers, companies offering new technologies or business models that could advance the global economy and have a positive impact on peoples’ lives.mPedigree: http://www.mpedigree.org/