Paul Balogun
Counterfeit drugs are very rampant in Africa today, leading to deaths of adults and children, this inspired Levit Nudi to innovate Tambua, a Kenyan based mobile app used to identify approved medicines and drugstores in a bid to combat counterfeit and substandard medicines.
Levit Nudi explains that the name of the app Tambua is a Kiswahili word which means identify, he was part of the 5 winners that received US$5,000 each as winners of Champions of Science. According to the founder of Tambua, the app uses a bar-code and location tracking technology to verify medicines throughout the supply chain, adding that the app could work with limited access to the internet, which makes it different from similar solutions on the market.
According to WHO research insight, about one of ten medical products, is substandard or falsified and likely responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of children from diseases like malaria and pneumonia every year, a situation that threatens the Sustainable Development Goals.
Drug manufacturers are encouraged to buy into this development and work together with Tambua to spread the coverage of the app and erase counterfeit drugs to a very large extent.
