GREENSVILLE: In the heart of Liberia’s healthcare delivery system lies a stark reality, with the street marketing scales of expired drugs by quack doctors heavily tipped towards the country’s predominately poor people.
The situation leaves the marginalized and impoverished citizens and residents to fend for themselves health-wise across the country.
One of the expired drugs being widely marketed in Sinoe County and other parts of Southeastern Region of Liberia by roaming quack doctors or self-proclaimed pharmacists has been identified as “KOFOF.”
The drug, “KOFOF,” is being sold in multiple drugs stores and other health centers and as well as individuals in transport rubber buckets in the Southeastern Region.
KOFOF is widely believed to be a cough syrup that provides symptomatic relief of deep chesty coughs and soothes the throat without causing drowsiness.
It was established that manufacture date for the KOFOF drug is January 2027 and it expired on January 27, 2024.
However, the drug is being widely marketed to most of the citizens and residents who cannot read and write.
Some residents said even some educated but financially incapacitated people in the region use the expired drugs because no alternative drugs are available for their health treatment.
Generally, citizens and residents in those areas faced challenges in accessing essential drugs at major public health facilities.
Patients in the region are often left with no alternative but to accept so-called prescriptions given by nurses and doctors in various hospitals and other health facilities to purchase the prescribed drugs in private drug stores for drugs, often for high prices.
There are increasing reports that medical drugs being donated over the years to many public hospitals by donor institutions and countries are suspected to be stolen by some medical personnel, some of whom run their own health centers and pharmacies in many parts of the country.
The situation leads to low or lack of essential drug supplies at various public hospitals and health centers, especially in the leeward areas.
This situation also compels patients to go for any medicated drugs that surface before them to gain health relief when they are feeling sick.
It may be recalled that the Country Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Jim Wright, disclosed that 90% of Drugs donated to Liberia by donor-partners were being sold to private pharmacies, resulting into continued shortage of essential drugs at health facilities in Liberia.
Such acts, which he described as “fraud”, according to Director Wright, had prevented most ordinary Liberians from receiving basic essential medical drugs while a handful of the people who can afford the high cost of drugs buy them.
