In a bid to ensure substandard drugs are out of the shelves, the Pharmacy and Poisons Board on Thursday, December 5, closed down 80 chemists in Nairobi, in relation to the sale of these drugs.
In a report by Citizen TV, the board also managed to arrest 43 people in relation to the sale of substandard drugs.
The 43 people were arraigned in court and 10 people who pleaded guilty were slapped with fines ranging from Ksh200,000 to Ksh380,000
According to the senior inspector of drugs, Julius Kaluai, the board would be undertaking operations to clean up drug stores in the city, in an effort to ensure the health of Kenyans is not compromised.
“This is a joint operation alongside the police and the office of the regional commissioner and we were implementing the mapping they had given us,” said Kaluai.
Kaluai further asked members of the public to be on the lookout for health code banners in drug stores to ensure they were buying the right drugs.
Kaluai further urged pharmacists and drug store owners to obtain all necessary documents that allow them to operate normally, asserting that the board was not unfairly targeting their businesses.
The board further indicated that this was a continuous operation that started in Central, Coast and Nairobi regions and would continue countrywide.
According to The Standard in September 2019, Homa Bay County in conjunction with the poisons board began a crackdown on fake pharmacists and chemists selling substandard drugs to unsuspecting members of the public blaming the fake practitioners for increased health complications.
“Some patients have developed resistance to drugs due to the use of counterfeit drugs obtained from unqualified pharmacists. This has caused a lot of harm to society,” remarked Homa Bay County health officer Gerald Akeche.
