The Nigerian pharmacologist Dora Nkem Akunyili knows all about the dangers of counterfeit drugs: in 1988 her sister was killed by them. Thirteen years later the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, appointed her head of the country’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
One of her main tasks is to take on the manufacturers of fake drugs that have caused huge damage in her country.
She has found that more than two-thirds of drugs sold in markets, and a high proportion of those used in clinics and hospitals, come from rogue producers. The drugs have no…
