Nigerian Health Tech Startup Chekkit Secures Partnership with Afghanistan to Help Combat Drug Counterfeiting in the Asian Country

Nigerian health tech startup Chekkit has secured a partnership with Afghanistan to pilot its drug anti-counterfeiting solution in the Asian country.

Africa and Asia have been plagued with the problem of counterfeit goods for many years. This menace which has tarried for a long time is about to be a thing of the past as these continents are fighting back with strategic partnerships.

Over the years, we have seen several partnerships between progressive governments and innovative technology companies to tackle counterfeiting head-on, no holding back. A testament to the fact that a lot can be achieved with strategic public-private collaborations.

Afghanistan is one such progressive government, while Fantom Foundation and Chekkit Technologies are two of such innovative technology companies. The problem they set out to solve; lack of visibility in the pharmaceutical industry. There are too many illicit players in the Afghan pharmaceutical industry that sell drugs that harm Afghans daily.

To put that in perspective, as of 2015, a total of 450 foreign pharmaceutical suppliers were registered with the health ministry in Afghanistan, which had a population of 31 million people. In comparison, India, which had a population of more than 1.2 billion, had about 100 registered foreign medicine suppliers. Something needed to be done to better sieve out the illicit pharma traders.

To battle this, the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health signed an MoU with Fantom and Chekkit to help tackle the problem of counterfeit meds in the country using blockchain. The project, which begins with a 3-month pilot, will utilize Chekkit’s product authentication technology to track and verify all drugs sold in the country.

The Fantom Blockchain Challenge (held in November 2019 at the AfricArena Summit in South Africa), in which Chekkit was among the top three participants, initiated the partnership. Fantom was already in conversation with the Afghan Ministry of Health and subsequently, brought Chekkit into the discussion because its solution was perceived to be advanced enough to tackle the Afghan counterfeit problem and the fact that Chekkit’s solution was built to work perfectly in developing countries, was a huge plus as well. The partnership sees Chekkit’s solution deployed on Fantom’s DAG blockchain network.

How Will The Drug Verification Pilot Work?

Chekkit’s smart labels will be attached to 80,000 pharmaceutical products sold in the Afghan market. Each smart label has a unique QR code generated by Chekkit’s proprietary software which contains information on each product like its authenticity, manufacturing date, expiry date, FDA number, manufacturer, distributor, and so on.  

On the part of the Afghan public/consumers, they can then verify the drugs before purchase/use by scratching Chekkit’s smart label on any of the pilot products to reveal the product’s QR code, scan with Chekkit App, and then view the authenticity of the product as well as other product information.

To encourage verification, Chekkit has deployed a loyalty/reward system where consumers win a little something back when they verify products. This is a win/win for everyone involved. Chekkit has also provided an oversight capability for the Health Ministry by providing special hand-held devices that they can use to verify the authenticity of the products at the point of entry into the country. This is possible because Chekkit’s smart labels are made using special materials called taggants, providing an extra layer of security for all parties involved.

The process will follow this sequence:

1. Serialization: The manufacturers of the 80,000 pharmaceutical products will utilize Chekkit’s Consumer Intelligence solution where they get access to the unique product IDs (QR codes) that have been generated by the platform and stored on the blockchain network. The IDs are different for every unit and contain information on each product’s SKU, production date, expiry date, registration number, and much more. The codes are then supplied as scratch-off sticker labels that then go on the products. The QR codes are hidden by the scratch panel of the label. A foolproof anti-counterfeit technology solution.

2. Verification by regulators: Chekkit’s smart labels are made using special materials called taggants which can be verified using special hand-held devices. These devices will be used to verify the authenticity of pharmaceuticals by regulatory officers at their point of entry into Afghanistan as well as during in-store inspections of drug retail outlets. This gives the project an extra layer of security.

3. Verification by consumerAfghans buying pharmaceuticals in stores can also verify the authenticity of drugs before they use them. All they have to do is scratch the chekkit label on the product to reveal its unique QR code and just scan it using Chekkit App. They can then see if the product is original or fake as well as other information on the product like its expiry date, registration number, etc. To encourage people to verify products, rewards (loyalty points for a raffle) have been attached to the verification process. A short feedback survey is also attached to the verification process.

4. Data collection & analysis: When a product is verified, data like the location of purchase, time of verification, product verified, and so on, is collected and is made available to the product manufacturers in real-time. Even better, surveys have been tied into the verification process and consumers have to answer the 2 or 3 questions attached to a product to win a reward. With the surveys, data on consumer behavior and preference will be collected and analyzed in real-time. All this is available to the manufacturer on Chekkit’s Consumer Intelligence solution.

5. Trackable reward & loyalty campaigns: The product manufacturers involved in the pilot will be running a raffle draw for consumers who have bought and verified their products. As a consumer verifies a product and takes a short survey, they are rewarded with points and entered into the raffle. The more products verified by a consumer, the more points got and the more entries into the raffle draw. At the end of the pilot, winners emerge, randomly selected by Chekkit’s Consumer Intelligence solution.

6. Supply Chain Tracking (Track & Trace): Chekkit’s solution will be used to track the movement of pharmaceutical products from when they leave the warehouse and through every point in the supply chain. This will provide real-time visibility on the movement and distribution of pharmaceutical products until it gets to the final consumer. A pilot for this will begin after this initial phase of the project.

Speaking on the innovative initiative, Dare Odumade (Co-founder and CEO of Chekkit Technologies) said: “The Afghanistan Ministry of public health had been looking for effective ways to verify the authenticity and effectiveness of drugs that are being imported into the country and Chekkit provided them with a way to authenticate the drugs at the point of entry into the country and also at the point of purchase. We believe this double focus strategy will make it extremely difficult for counterfeiters to thrive.

Through this partnership, we will provide the pharma companies involved with valuable consumer insights and a reward program to encourage purchase and verification by buyers, as well as give the government/ministry a transparent view of the pharmaceutical market. On completion of a successful pilot, we envisage our technology being deployed across the board for all meds coming into Afghanistan.

Finally, we will also deploy a supply chain tracking solution that offers 360-degree protection against counterfeiting.  We plan that the supply chain tracking will be implemented in collaboration with manufacturers, distributors, and retailers”.

Partners Involved:

Chekkit Technologies: An African HealthTech startup providing a secure global product authentication system with practical applications across; anti-counterfeit protection, consumer data gathering & analysis, consumer rewards & loyalty programs, as well as personalized consumer engagement & communication.

Fantom: A DAG-based smart contract platform with fast confirmation times. Their solution is built on Fantom’s opera mainnet, providing fast and secure consensus capable of scaling to the high transactional throughput required to power a country’s entire healthcare system.

Afghanistan Ministry of Health: The Ministry of Health is committed to implementing these solutions throughout the healthcare system in Afghanistan and is interested in new and emerging technologies such as blockchain that will help solve various problems.

Royal Star Ltd: One of Afghanistan’s biggest distributors of pharmaceutical products. The company distributes products from ten producers located around the world such as the United Kingdom and India. They have also worked closely with bilateral and multilateral aid organizations such as the World Health Organization and USAID.

Nabros Pharma Pvt Ltd: A manufacturing and exporting company based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. They are accredited by the World Health Organization Good Manufacturer Guidelines (GMP), the Pharmaceutical Inspection Co-operation Scheme (PIC/S) based in Geneva, Switzerland, and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Nigeria. The company manufactures products such as tablets, capsules, small volume parenteral, ointments, and oral liquids which are exported to 35 countries around the globe.