Expose an Indian pharmaceutical company that feeds the opioid crisis of Western Africa

An Indian pharmaceutical company is manufacturing opioids without a license and highly addictive and illegally exporting them to Western Africa, where it is promoting an important public health crisis in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria and Ivory Cote, has revealed an ocular investigation of the BBC.

Aveo Pharmaceuticals, based in Mumbai, manufactures a range of pills that are under different brands and are packaged to look like legitimate medicines. But all contain the same harmful mixture of ingredients: tapentadol, a powerful opioid and carisoprodol, a muscular relaxant so addictive that it is prohibited in Europe.

This drug combination has no license for use anywhere in the world and can cause respiratory difficulties and seizures. An overdose can kill. Despite the risks, these opioids are popular as street drugs in many western Africa countries, because they are very cheap and widely available.

The World BBC service found packages, marked with the Aveo logo, for sale in the streets of cities and cities of Ghana, Nigerian and Ivairian.

Having tracked drugs to the Aveo factory in India, the BBC sent an undercover operation inside the factory, passing through an African business man who seeks to supply Nigeria opioids. Using a hidden camera, the BBC filmed one of the directors of Aveo, Vinod Sharma, showing the same dangerous products as the BBC found for sale in Western Africa.

In the images recorded in secret, the operation tells Sharma that his plan is to sell the pills to adolescents in Nigeria “who love this product.” Sharma does not shudder. “Ok,” he replies, before explaining that if users take two or three pills at the same time, they can “relax” and accept that “high” can come. Towards the end of the meeting, Sharma says: “This is very harmful to health,” adding “today, this is a business.”

It is a business that is damaging health and destroying the potential of millions of young people in West Africa.

In the city of Tamale, in northern Ghana, many young people are taking illegal opioids that one of the city’s bosses, Alhassan Maham, has created a voluntary working group of about 100 local citizens whose mission is to assault drug traffickers and Take these pills outside the streets.

“Drugs consume the sanity of those who abuse them,” says Maham, “as a fire burns when the kerosene is poured.” An addict in Tamale expressed even more simple. Drugs, he said, have “wasted our lives.”

The BBC team followed the task force while jumped to motorcycles and, after a tip on a drug agreement, launched a raid in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Tamale. Along the way they passed a young man collapsed in a stupor that, according to the locals, had taken these drugs.

When the concessionaire was caught, he carried a plastic bag full of green pills labeled with tafrodol. The packages were stamped with the distinctive logo of Aveo Pharmaceuticals.

It is not only in Tamale that Aveo pills are causing misery. The BBC found similar products, manufactured by AVEO, have been seized by the police in other parts of Ghana.

We also find evidence that Aveo pills are on sale in the streets of Nigeria and Ivory Coast, where adolescents dissolve them in an alcoholic energy drink to increase the high.

The publicly available export data show that Aveo Pharmaceuticals, along with a sister company called Westfin International, sends millions of these tablets to Ghana and other Western Africa countries.

Nigeria, with a population of 225 million people, provides the largest market for these pills. It has been estimated that around four million Nigerians abuse some form of opioids, according to the National Office of Statistics of Nigeria.

The president of the Nigeria Drug and Drug Application Agency (Ndlea), Gen Mohammed Buba Marwa, told the BBC that opioids are “devastating our young people, our families, is in all the community of Nigeria.”

In 2018, after an ocular investigation of the BBC Africa on the sale of opioids such as street drugs, the Nigerian authorities tried to control a widely abused opioid analgesic called Tramadol.

The Government prohibited the sale of Tramadol without a recipe, imposed strict limits in the maximum dose and took energetic measures against imports of illegal pills. At the same time, the Indian authorities tightened the export regulations in Tramadol.

Not long after this repression, Aveo Pharmaceuticals began exporting a new tapentadol -based pill, an even stronger opioid, mixed with the muscular relaxing carisoprodol.

Western Africa officials warn that opioid exporters seem to be using these new combined pills as a substitute for tramadol and evade repression.

In the Aveo factory there were boxes of boxes of the combination of stacked drugs one on top of the other, almost to the roof. In his desk, Vinod Sharma presented a package after package of the cuff pills

He told the BBC undercover team that the “scientists” who work in his factory could combine different medications to “make a new product.”

Look at the opioid kings of the BBC Eye Investigations in Iplayer Or, if you are outside the United Kingdom, look YouTube.

Aveo’s new product is even more dangerous than the tramadol that has been replaced. According to Dr. Lekhash Shukla, assistant professor at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bengaluru, India, Tapentadol “gives the effects of an opioid”, including the very deep sleep.

“It could be deep enough that people don’t breathe, and that leads to drug overdose,” he explained. “And together with that, you are giving another agent, Carisoprodol, who also gives a very deep dream, relaxation. It sounds like a very dangerous combination.”

Carisoprodol has been prohibited in Europe because it is addictive. It is approved for use in the USA, but only for short periods of up to three weeks. Abstinence symptoms include anxiety, insomnia and hallucinations.

When mixed with tapentadol, the withdrawal is even “more severe” compared to regular opioids, said Dr. Shukla. “It is a fairly painful experience.”

He said he did not know of clinical trials about the effectiveness of this combination. Unlike Tramadol, which is legal for use in limited doses, the Cocktail Tapentadol-Carisoprodol “does not sound like a rational combination,” he said. “This is not something that has a license to be used in our country.”

In India, pharmaceutical companies cannot legally manufacture and export medications without license unless these medications meet the standards of the importing country. Aveo sends tafrodol and products similar to Ghana, where this combination of tapentadol and Carisoprodol is, according to the National Drug Control Agency of Ghana, without a license and illegal. When sending tufrodol to Ghana, Aveo is breaking the Indian law.

We put these accusations to Vinod Sharma and Aveo Pharmaceuticals. They did not respond.

The Indian drug regulator, the CDSCO, told us that the Indian government recognizes its responsibility for global public health and is committed to ensuring that India has a responsible and strong pharmaceutical regulatory system.

He added that Indian exports to other countries are closely monitored and that recently adjusted regulation is strictly applied. He also called importing countries to support India’s efforts ensuring that they had equally strong regulatory systems.

The CDSCO declared that he has addressed the matter with other countries, including those of Western Africa, and is committed to work with them to avoid irregularities. The regulator said he will take immediate measures against any pharmaceutical company involved in negligence.

Aveo is not the only Indian company that makes opioids without a license. Publicly available export data suggests that other pharmaceutical companies manufacture similar products, and medications with different brands are widely available in Western Africa.

These manufacturers are damaging the reputation of the fast -growing pharmaceutical industry of India, which makes high quality generic medicines in which millions of people worldwide depend and manufacture vaccines that have saved millions of lives. Industry exports are worth at least $ 28 billion (£ 22 billion) a year.

Speaking about its meeting with Sharma, the undercover operation of the BBC, whose identity must remain hidden from their safety, says: “Nigerian journalists have been informing about this opioid crisis for more than 20 years, but I was finally face to face. .. with one of the men at the root of the opioid crisis in Africa, one of the men who really makes this product and sends it to our countries for the loading of containers. describing it simply as business. “

Back in Tamale, Ghana, the BBC team followed the local task force in a final raid that appeared even more in Aveo tafrodol. That night they gathered in a local park to burn the drugs they had seized.

“We are burning it in an open glow for everyone to see,” said Zickay, one of the leaders, since the packages were soaked in gasoline and lit on fire, “so he sends a signal to vendors and suppliers: If they receive, they will burn your drugs. “

But even when the flames destroyed a few hundred tafrodol packages, the “vendors and suppliers” at the top of this chain, thousands of miles away in India, were producing millions more, and became rich in the profits of the misery.