What is the name of your organization?
Sproxil Nigeria Ltd
What is the name of your solution?
Sproxil Defender 4 Communities
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Sproxil Defender uses community intelligence & item-unique codes on antibiotics to map availability, price, falsified rates and treatment outcomes
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Nigeria
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
Nigeria
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
The global counterfeit drug market, a billion-dollar industry, is booming in Africa. About 100,000 people die every year across Africa due to falsified or sub-standard medication, according to WHO estimates. Antibiotics across LMICs have been reported to have a failure rate of 12.4% (JAMA). Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, faces a significant challenge with substandard and falsified medicines, which are not only dangerous but also undermine public trust in healthcare. Nigeria’s economic crisis, rendering about 133 million people multidimensionally poor, plus the skyrocketing 1,100% increase in antibiotic prices as of 2024, make it a fertile ground for stockouts and substandard/falsified medicine sales. Anecdotally, there is also heterogeneity in the availability of substandard/falsified drugs across Nigeria's different regions and lack of proactive stock management especially in the heavily-fragmented private sector, where 68.7% of Nigerians access care. However, there is limited published evidence on the proportion of substandard/falsified antibiotics, their geographic spread within Nigeria, local antibiotic price and availability variations and the inter-dependence of these factors. We will use Sproxil's crowdsourced mobile technology to generate publishable data and valuable insights to quantify and address those problems.
Sources: https://tinyurl.com/SproxilApplicationReferences
What is your solution?
Sproxil Defender is a mobile-based anti-counterfeiting solution that allows consumers to verify a medicine via a simple text message or call center in local language. Brand owners buy unique tamper-evident item-unique codes from Sproxil and affix them to individual product units at their authentic factories. When these products reach retail points, consumer can send the code for free to Sproxil's product verification system to confirm the authenticity of the product using any phone - smart or not - and in any major local language. Consumers can then opt-in to share their location, complete a price survey and report treatment outcomes. Sproxil proactively calls consumers who receive a "not genuine product" message, to gather additional information on the retail location and direct the consumer to authentic medication sources. Sproxil has issued over 4.5 billion item-unique codes globally, and its Defender solution has been used on 187 different antibiotic SKUs in Nigeria.
Sproxil Defender now also includes a Pharmacy Loyalty Program where unique codes are placed on aggregated cartons ordered by pharmacists and shop keepers. This new program enables pharmacists to report stock levels and anonymized patient health-seeking behavior to better capture care gaps in Nigeria's healthcare system.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Sproxil's Defender solution serves any patient who purchases medicines bearing Sproxil's solution, which spans multiple drug types. Over 10 million Nigerians have used Sproxil's Defender solution since it launched in 2010, while 8,065 pharmacists have joined Sproxil's pharmacy loyalty program.
In 2010, based on a successful pilot, the Nigerian food and drug regulator (NAFDAC) issued a mandate for all antimalarials to use consumer-facing product verification technology like Sproxil Defender. The initiative, called the NAFDAC Mobile Authentication Service (MAS) has made significant contributions to reducing counterfeit anti-malarials, as shared by the Director General of NAFDAC: “MAS seems to have had a profound impact, with the failure rate for antimalarials falling from nearly 20 per cent in 2010-2012 to just 1.3 per cent in a March 2019 results”. With this grant, we seek to expand Defender's proven success with antimalarials to antibiotics, making access to antibiotics safer for millions of patients in Nigeria.
Source: https://www.securingindustry.com/pharmaceuticals/nigeria-sets-five-year-objective-for-medicines-traceability/s40/a10790/
