The Governments of Angola and Portugal signed, in Lisbon, a collaboration protocol for the prevention and combat of drug counterfeiting crimes, announced this Friday as Angolan authorities.

According to a note from the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC), the agreement was signed by the director general of the SIC, chief commissioner Arnaldo Manuel Carlos, representing the Angolan government, and by the chairman of the board of directors of the National Authority of Medicines and Products of Saúde, IP (Infarmed), Rui Santos Ivo, on the Portuguese side.

The protocol aims at institutional collaboration in the domains of drug quality assurance, information exchange in the field of quality assurance, training in the area of ​​pharmaceutical performance and laboratory analysis, with the aim of preventing and combating drug counterfeiting crimes and commercialization of counterfeit, expired or unused drugs, as well as other crimes that threaten public health, according to the same source.

The agreement was signed within the scope of the second meeting of the Angola-Portugal intergovernmental joint commission, held on Thursday in Lisbon, in which the delegations of the two countries, headed by the heads of Portuguese diplomacy, Augusto Santos Silva, and Angolan, Téte António, analyzed the implementation of bilateral cooperation between the two States, in different domains, such as health, education, diplomatic and consular relations, defense and security, justice, trade and industry, and finance.

In Angola, the drugs with the highest incidence of counterfeiting are analgesics, antimalarials, antibiotics and drugs for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, as reported in 2017 by the national health authorities, most of them coming from China, India, Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo.