By:Momodou Justice Darboe
The governments of India and The Gambia have finalized an arrangement for the testing of India-manufactured Gambia-destined medicines, The Voice was reliably informed.
Currently, The Gambia has no testing facility to scientifically analyse medicines that it imports from Europe, China, US and India.
The Gambia sometime this year tightened its medicines importation regulations following the deaths of more than 60 children in the country as a result of consuming India-made contaminated cough syrup.
The health emergency has now resulted in stringent application of the laws around medicines importation.
Importers are now required to have their products tested before they could be distributed but The Gambia has no lab for testing.
“It’s not only Gambia that doesn’t have testing facility,” the acting Director of Medicines Control Agency (MCA), Mr. Essa Marenah, admitted in an interview with The Voice. He continued: “There are countries that don’t have testing facility in Africa. And, there are some countries that have testing facility in Africa. But still there are countries that do not have. So, if you don’t have a testing facility in your country that should not stop you from sending to others to safeguard your public.”
It’s estimated that 70 to 80 per cent of medicinal products consumed in The Gambia is probably imported from India.
According to the overseer of the MCA, importers will now pay for testing in India before their products are shipped out.
He elaborated: “We have communicated that to Indian government and we have got a third party agent to collect the samples, take them to accredited labs and the exporter will pay before you supply a local importer in The Gambia. So, that is going to take care of the issue of sending products for testing. So, they will be tested from the source but from independent third party laboratories. So, it will not be tested from the manufacturer. We have made arrangement.
They (independent labs) just pick sample as you are loading your container…they will take sample and before your container arrives in The Gambia, we will have the test result. We are working on similar arrangement in China but it did not materialize. China is the second largest country, where products are coming from. So, we are working on China.”