BBC World Service
BBCAn Indian pharmaceutical firm is manufacturing unlicensed, extremely addictive opioids and exporting them illegally to West Africa the place they’re driving a serious public well being disaster in international locations together with Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote D’Ivoire, a BBC Eye investigation has revealed.
Aveo Prescribed drugs, based mostly in Mumbai, makes a variety of tablets that go underneath totally different model names and are packaged to appear to be reputable medicines. However all comprise the identical dangerous mixture of components: tapentadol, a robust opioid, and carisoprodol, a muscle relaxant so addictive it is banned in Europe.
This mixture of medicine will not be licensed to be used wherever on the earth and might trigger respiration difficulties and seizures. An overdose can kill. Regardless of the dangers, these opioids are common as avenue medicine in lots of West African international locations, as a result of they’re so low cost and extensively out there.
The BBC World Service discovered packets of them, branded with the Aveo brand, on the market on the streets of Ghanaian, Nigerian, and Ivoirian cities and cities.
Having traced the medicine again to Aveo’s manufacturing unit in India, the BBC despatched an undercover operative contained in the manufacturing unit, posing as an African businessman trying to provide opioids to Nigeria. Utilizing a hidden digicam, the BBC filmed one in all Aveo’s administrators, Vinod Sharma, exhibiting off the identical harmful merchandise the BBC discovered on the market throughout West Africa.
Within the secretly recorded footage, the operative tells Sharma that his plan is to promote the tablets to youngsters in Nigeria “who all love this product”. Sharma would not flinch. “OK,” he replies, earlier than explaining that if customers take two or three tablets directly, they will “calm down” and agrees they will get “excessive”. In the direction of the top of the assembly, Sharma says: “That is very dangerous for the well being,” including “these days, that is enterprise.”
It’s a enterprise that’s damaging the well being and destroying the potential of thousands and thousands of younger folks throughout West Africa.
Within the metropolis of Tamale, in northern Ghana, so many younger individuals are taking unlawful opioids that one of many metropolis’s chiefs, Alhassan Maham, has created a voluntary job pressure of about 100 native residents whose mission is to raid drug sellers and take these tablets off the streets.
“The medicine eat the sanity of those that abuse them,” says Maham, “like a fireplace burns when kerosene is poured on it.” One addict in Tamale put it much more merely. The medicine, he mentioned, have “wasted our lives”.
The BBC workforce adopted the duty pressure as they jumped on to motorbikes and, following a tip off a few drug deal, launched a raid in one in all Tamale’s poorest neighbourhoods. On the best way they handed a younger man slumped in a stupor who, in accordance with locals, had taken these medicine.
When the supplier was caught, he was carrying a plastic bag full of inexperienced tablets labelled Tafrodol. The packets had been stamped with the distinctive brand of Aveo Prescribed drugs.
It isn’t simply in Tamale that Aveo’s tablets are inflicting distress. The BBC discovered related merchandise, made by Aveo, have been seized by police elsewhere in Ghana.
We additionally discovered proof that Aveo’s tablets are on the market on the streets of Nigeria and Cote D’Ivoire, the place youngsters dissolve them in an alcoholic vitality drink to extend the excessive.
Publicly-available export knowledge present that Aveo Prescribed drugs, together with a sister firm known as Westfin Worldwide, is delivery thousands and thousands of those tablets to Ghana and different West African international locations.
Nigeria, with a inhabitants of 225 million folks, supplies the most important marketplace for these tablets. It has been estimated that about 4 million Nigerians abuse some type of opioid, in accordance with Nigeria’s Nationwide Bureau of Statistics.
The Chairman of Nigeria’s Drug and Regulation Enforcement Company (NDLEA), Brig Gen Mohammed Buba Marwa, advised the BBC, opioids are “devastating our youths, our households, it is in each group in Nigeria”.
In 2018, following a BBC Africa Eye investigation into the sale of opioids as avenue medicine, Nigerian authorities tried to get a grip on a extensively abused opioid painkiller known as tramadol.
The federal government banned the sale of tramadol with out prescription, imposed strict limits on the utmost dose, and cracked down on imports of unlawful tablets. On the identical time, Indian authorities tightened export rules on tramadol.
Not lengthy after this crackdown, Aveo Prescribed drugs started to export a brand new tablet based mostly on tapentadol, a good stronger opioid, combined with the muscle-relaxant carisoprodol.
West African officers are warning that opioid exporters seem like utilizing these new mixture tablets as an alternative choice to tramadol and to evade the crackdown.
Within the Aveo manufacturing unit there have been cartons of the mix medicine stacked on high of one another, nearly ceiling-high. On his desk, Vinod Sharma laid out packet after packet of the tapentadol-carisoprodol cocktail tablets that the corporate markets underneath a variety of names together with Tafrodol, the most well-liked, in addition to TimaKing and Tremendous Royal-225.
He advised the BBC’s undercover workforce that “scientists” working in his manufacturing unit might mix totally different medicine to “make a brand new product”.
Watch India’s Opioid Kings from BBC Eye Investigations on iPlayer or, if you’re outdoors the UK, watch on YouTube.
Aveo’s new product is much more harmful than the tramadol it has changed. In line with Dr Lekhansh Shukla, assistant professor on the Nationwide Institute of Psychological Well being and Neuro Sciences in Bengaluru, India, tapentadol “provides the consequences of an opioid” together with very deep sleep.
“It might be deep sufficient that folks do not breathe, and that results in drug overdose,” he defined. “And together with that, you’re giving one other agent, carisoprodol, which additionally provides very deep sleep, rest. It feels like a really harmful mixture.”
Carisoprodol has been banned in Europe as a result of it’s addictive. It’s accredited to be used within the US however just for brief intervals of as much as three weeks. Withdrawal signs embody nervousness, insomnia, and hallucinations.
When combined with tapentadol the withdrawal is even “extra extreme” in comparison with common opioids, mentioned Dr Shukla. “It is a pretty painful expertise.”
He mentioned he knew of no scientific trials on the efficacy of this mix. Not like tramadol, which is authorized to be used in restricted doses, the tapentadol-carisoprodol cocktail “doesn’t sound like a rational mixture”, he mentioned. “This isn’t one thing that’s licensed for use in our nation.”
In India, pharmaceutical firms can’t legally manufacture and export unlicensed medicine until these medicine meet the requirements of the importing nation. Aveo ships Tafrodol and related merchandise to Ghana, the place this mix of tapentadol and carisoprodol is, in accordance with Ghana’s nationwide Drug Enforcement Company, unlicensed and unlawful. By delivery Tafrodol to Ghana, Aveo is breaking Indian regulation.
We put these allegations to Vinod Sharma and Aveo Prescribed drugs. They didn’t reply.
The Indian medicine regulator, the CDSCO, advised us the Indian authorities recognises its duty in the direction of world public well being and is dedicated to making sure India has a accountable and robust pharmaceutical regulatory system.
It added that exports from India to different international locations are intently monitored and that not too long ago tightened regulation is strictly enforced. It additionally known as importing international locations to assist India’s efforts by guaranteeing that they had equally robust regulatory methods.
The CDSCO acknowledged it has taken up the matter with different international locations, together with these in West Africa, and is dedicated to working with them to stop wrongdoing. The regulator mentioned it’s going to take instant motion in opposition to any pharmaceutical agency concerned in malpractice.
Aveo will not be the one Indian firm making and exporting unlicensed opioids. Publicly out there export knowledge recommend different pharma firms manufacture related merchandise, and medicines with totally different branding are extensively out there throughout West Africa.
These producers are damaging the popularity of India’s fast-growing pharmaceutical business, which makes high-quality generic medicines upon which thousands and thousands of individuals worldwide rely and manufactures vaccines which have saved thousands and thousands of lives. The business’s exports are value at the least $28bn (£22bn) a yr.
Talking about his assembly with Sharma, the BBC’s undercover operative, whose id should stay hid for his security, says: “Nigerian journalists have been reporting on this opioid disaster for greater than 20 years however lastly, I used to be head to head… with one of many males on the root of Africa’s opioid disaster, one of many males who truly makes this product and ships it into our international locations by the container load. He knew the hurt it was doing however he did not appear to care… describing it merely as enterprise.”
Again in Tamale, Ghana, the BBC workforce adopted the native job pressure on one ultimate raid that turned up much more of Aveo’s Tafrodol. That night they gathered in an area park to burn the medicine that they had seized.
“We’re burning it in an open glare for everyone to see,” mentioned Zickay, one of many leaders, because the packets had been doused in petrol and set ablaze, “so it sends a sign to the sellers and the suppliers: in the event that they get you, they’re going to burn your medicine”.
However even because the flames destroyed a number of hundred packets of Tafrodol, the “sellers and suppliers” on the high of this chain, hundreds of miles away in India, had been churning out thousands and thousands extra – and getting wealthy on the earnings of distress.
BBC World Service
BBCAn Indian pharmaceutical firm is manufacturing unlicensed, extremely addictive opioids and exporting them illegally to West Africa the place they’re driving a serious public well being disaster in international locations together with Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote D’Ivoire, a BBC Eye investigation has revealed.
Aveo Prescribed drugs, based mostly in Mumbai, makes a variety of tablets that go underneath totally different model names and are packaged to appear to be reputable medicines. However all comprise the identical dangerous mixture of components: tapentadol, a robust opioid, and carisoprodol, a muscle relaxant so addictive it is banned in Europe.
This mixture of medicine will not be licensed to be used wherever on the earth and might trigger respiration difficulties and seizures. An overdose can kill. Regardless of the dangers, these opioids are common as avenue medicine in lots of West African international locations, as a result of they’re so low cost and extensively out there.
The BBC World Service discovered packets of them, branded with the Aveo brand, on the market on the streets of Ghanaian, Nigerian, and Ivoirian cities and cities.
Having traced the medicine again to Aveo’s manufacturing unit in India, the BBC despatched an undercover operative contained in the manufacturing unit, posing as an African businessman trying to provide opioids to Nigeria. Utilizing a hidden digicam, the BBC filmed one in all Aveo’s administrators, Vinod Sharma, exhibiting off the identical harmful merchandise the BBC discovered on the market throughout West Africa.
Within the secretly recorded footage, the operative tells Sharma that his plan is to promote the tablets to youngsters in Nigeria “who all love this product”. Sharma would not flinch. “OK,” he replies, earlier than explaining that if customers take two or three tablets directly, they will “calm down” and agrees they will get “excessive”. In the direction of the top of the assembly, Sharma says: “That is very dangerous for the well being,” including “these days, that is enterprise.”
It’s a enterprise that’s damaging the well being and destroying the potential of thousands and thousands of younger folks throughout West Africa.
Within the metropolis of Tamale, in northern Ghana, so many younger individuals are taking unlawful opioids that one of many metropolis’s chiefs, Alhassan Maham, has created a voluntary job pressure of about 100 native residents whose mission is to raid drug sellers and take these tablets off the streets.
“The medicine eat the sanity of those that abuse them,” says Maham, “like a fireplace burns when kerosene is poured on it.” One addict in Tamale put it much more merely. The medicine, he mentioned, have “wasted our lives”.
The BBC workforce adopted the duty pressure as they jumped on to motorbikes and, following a tip off a few drug deal, launched a raid in one in all Tamale’s poorest neighbourhoods. On the best way they handed a younger man slumped in a stupor who, in accordance with locals, had taken these medicine.
When the supplier was caught, he was carrying a plastic bag full of inexperienced tablets labelled Tafrodol. The packets had been stamped with the distinctive brand of Aveo Prescribed drugs.
It isn’t simply in Tamale that Aveo’s tablets are inflicting distress. The BBC discovered related merchandise, made by Aveo, have been seized by police elsewhere in Ghana.
We additionally discovered proof that Aveo’s tablets are on the market on the streets of Nigeria and Cote D’Ivoire, the place youngsters dissolve them in an alcoholic vitality drink to extend the excessive.
Publicly-available export knowledge present that Aveo Prescribed drugs, together with a sister firm known as Westfin Worldwide, is delivery thousands and thousands of those tablets to Ghana and different West African international locations.
Nigeria, with a inhabitants of 225 million folks, supplies the most important marketplace for these tablets. It has been estimated that about 4 million Nigerians abuse some type of opioid, in accordance with Nigeria’s Nationwide Bureau of Statistics.
The Chairman of Nigeria’s Drug and Regulation Enforcement Company (NDLEA), Brig Gen Mohammed Buba Marwa, advised the BBC, opioids are “devastating our youths, our households, it is in each group in Nigeria”.
In 2018, following a BBC Africa Eye investigation into the sale of opioids as avenue medicine, Nigerian authorities tried to get a grip on a extensively abused opioid painkiller known as tramadol.
The federal government banned the sale of tramadol with out prescription, imposed strict limits on the utmost dose, and cracked down on imports of unlawful tablets. On the identical time, Indian authorities tightened export rules on tramadol.
Not lengthy after this crackdown, Aveo Prescribed drugs started to export a brand new tablet based mostly on tapentadol, a good stronger opioid, combined with the muscle-relaxant carisoprodol.
West African officers are warning that opioid exporters seem like utilizing these new mixture tablets as an alternative choice to tramadol and to evade the crackdown.
Within the Aveo manufacturing unit there have been cartons of the mix medicine stacked on high of one another, nearly ceiling-high. On his desk, Vinod Sharma laid out packet after packet of the tapentadol-carisoprodol cocktail tablets that the corporate markets underneath a variety of names together with Tafrodol, the most well-liked, in addition to TimaKing and Tremendous Royal-225.
He advised the BBC’s undercover workforce that “scientists” working in his manufacturing unit might mix totally different medicine to “make a brand new product”.
Watch India’s Opioid Kings from BBC Eye Investigations on iPlayer or, if you’re outdoors the UK, watch on YouTube.
Aveo’s new product is much more harmful than the tramadol it has changed. In line with Dr Lekhansh Shukla, assistant professor on the Nationwide Institute of Psychological Well being and Neuro Sciences in Bengaluru, India, tapentadol “provides the consequences of an opioid” together with very deep sleep.
“It might be deep sufficient that folks do not breathe, and that results in drug overdose,” he defined. “And together with that, you’re giving one other agent, carisoprodol, which additionally provides very deep sleep, rest. It feels like a really harmful mixture.”
Carisoprodol has been banned in Europe as a result of it’s addictive. It’s accredited to be used within the US however just for brief intervals of as much as three weeks. Withdrawal signs embody nervousness, insomnia, and hallucinations.
When combined with tapentadol the withdrawal is even “extra extreme” in comparison with common opioids, mentioned Dr Shukla. “It is a pretty painful expertise.”
He mentioned he knew of no scientific trials on the efficacy of this mix. Not like tramadol, which is authorized to be used in restricted doses, the tapentadol-carisoprodol cocktail “doesn’t sound like a rational mixture”, he mentioned. “This isn’t one thing that’s licensed for use in our nation.”
In India, pharmaceutical firms can’t legally manufacture and export unlicensed medicine until these medicine meet the requirements of the importing nation. Aveo ships Tafrodol and related merchandise to Ghana, the place this mix of tapentadol and carisoprodol is, in accordance with Ghana’s nationwide Drug Enforcement Company, unlicensed and unlawful. By delivery Tafrodol to Ghana, Aveo is breaking Indian regulation.
We put these allegations to Vinod Sharma and Aveo Prescribed drugs. They didn’t reply.
The Indian medicine regulator, the CDSCO, advised us the Indian authorities recognises its duty in the direction of world public well being and is dedicated to making sure India has a accountable and robust pharmaceutical regulatory system.
It added that exports from India to different international locations are intently monitored and that not too long ago tightened regulation is strictly enforced. It additionally known as importing international locations to assist India’s efforts by guaranteeing that they had equally robust regulatory methods.
The CDSCO acknowledged it has taken up the matter with different international locations, together with these in West Africa, and is dedicated to working with them to stop wrongdoing. The regulator mentioned it’s going to take instant motion in opposition to any pharmaceutical agency concerned in malpractice.
Aveo will not be the one Indian firm making and exporting unlicensed opioids. Publicly out there export knowledge recommend different pharma firms manufacture related merchandise, and medicines with totally different branding are extensively out there throughout West Africa.
These producers are damaging the popularity of India’s fast-growing pharmaceutical business, which makes high-quality generic medicines upon which thousands and thousands of individuals worldwide rely and manufactures vaccines which have saved thousands and thousands of lives. The business’s exports are value at the least $28bn (£22bn) a yr.
Talking about his assembly with Sharma, the BBC’s undercover operative, whose id should stay hid for his security, says: “Nigerian journalists have been reporting on this opioid disaster for greater than 20 years however lastly, I used to be head to head… with one of many males on the root of Africa’s opioid disaster, one of many males who truly makes this product and ships it into our international locations by the container load. He knew the hurt it was doing however he did not appear to care… describing it merely as enterprise.”
Again in Tamale, Ghana, the BBC workforce adopted the native job pressure on one ultimate raid that turned up much more of Aveo’s Tafrodol. That night they gathered in an area park to burn the medicine that they had seized.
“We’re burning it in an open glare for everyone to see,” mentioned Zickay, one of many leaders, because the packets had been doused in petrol and set ablaze, “so it sends a sign to the sellers and the suppliers: in the event that they get you, they’re going to burn your medicine”.
However even because the flames destroyed a number of hundred packets of Tafrodol, the “sellers and suppliers” on the high of this chain, hundreds of miles away in India, had been churning out thousands and thousands extra – and getting wealthy on the earnings of distress.
