A Guinean researcher and doctor Gaoussou Fadiga has blamed the rise in kidney failures in Africa on the use of expired drugs from Europe.
Media reports on Monday quoted Dr Fadiga as saying that “42 per cent of pharmaceutical drugs eliminated from the European market in 2012 were sold in Africa”.
He explained that the consumption of the expired pharmaceutical products was and continued to cause kidney failure in millions of African patients.
Chronic kidney disease was at least three to four times more frequent in Africa than in the developed countries, according to the US National Library of Medicine.
It adds that the current dialysis treatment rate ranged from 70 per million population (pmp) in South Africa to more than 20 pmp in the most of sub-Saharan Africa.
Kidney transplant rate in Africa averaged 4 pmp and was 9.2 pmp in South Africa.
Dr Fadiga said only a collaboration between African governments and the World Health Organisation (WHO) and medical associations could end the flow of expired drugs from Europe to Africa.