AFDA: Medicines smuggling to country down 80 percent

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Afghanistan Food and Drugs Authority (AFDA) says it has collected and destroyed 700 tonnes of low quality and expired food and 6,700 types of medicines last year and sealed 890 pharmacy stores in Kabul.

Medicine Imports:

According to figures from AFDA acting director, Afghanistan imported medicines worth over $1BN from other countries during the past one year, with medicines worth $785 million entering the country legally while the rest smuggled into the country.

About smuggling of medicines into the country, the acting director said that in 2023 drug smuggling decreased by 80 percent.

Hundreds of medical stores sealed in 2023 in Kabul city:
AFDA spokesman Dr. Javed Hajeer told Pajhwok Afghan News today they monitored 6,327 pharmacy stores in Kabul in 2023.

According to Hajeer’s figures 5,157 pharmacy stores were monitored during day shift and 1,170 were monitored during night shift of working.

He said 893 pharmacies were closed for operating arbitrarily, lacking documents, pharmacist absenteeism or closure at night time.

Hajeer’s information shows out of 893 sealed pharmacies, 402 had no night shift pharmacists while 354 pharmacies were sealed for documents related issues.

During the monitoring process 312 drug stores were issued recommendation letters over lack of hygiene.

Destroying low quality and expired food, medicines:

AFDA collected 6,997 types of illegally imported and expired medicines from drugstores nationwide, Hajeer said.

He added different types of antibiotics, analgesics, painkillers, sedatives, anti-allergic and vitamins were among the medicines collected.

Most of the illegally imported or smuggled drugs had been brought to the country from Pakistan, Iran, India, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and some other countries.

During past year, nearly 60 types of fake food or medicines were identified by quality control labs.

And more than 700 tonnes of low quality food and expired medicines were collected and torched.

The destroyed food included different kinds of dairy products, cereals, desserts considered harmful for the health of the people.

If such items were consumed, they could have disastrous consequences.

aw/ma

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