National Drug Authority raises red flag on energy drinks containing ‘Viagra’

National Drug Authority has written to the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) alerting them of energy drinks containing Viagra.

In a December 28 letter and received on January 4 by UNBS,NDA says in their mandate to ensure availability at all times of essential, efficacious and cost effective drugs to the population, they received a complaint from a consumer about Natural Power SX, an energy drink.

“It purported to be an energy drink manufactured by Revin Zambia ltd. The complainant reportedly experienced a prolonged erection for nearly six hours and abnormal heart beat with constant sweating,” NDA says in their letter to UNBS.

The drugs body says they followed up on the complaint before landing on one of the products that they bought at Mega Standard Supermarket near the Old taxi park and sampled it in a bid to either confirm or dispel the claims by the complainant by according to NDA, the results were unusual.

“We sampled the product and subjected it to full analysis using a method adopted from USP. The results obtained indicated that the product was adulterated with sildenafil Citrate,” the National Drug Authority concludes.

According to Wikipedia, sildenafil is a product sold as the brand name Viagra among others and is used as a medication to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary arterial hypertension and is taken by mouth or injection into veins.

The drugs body however tasked the standards body to manage the situation since they are directly in charge of managing quality of goods including energy drinks.

Energy drinks are used by a number of people in the country especially youths and the latest findings could put Uganda National Drug Authority on the spot over the manner the adulterated energy drink was allowed into the country.

A number of people have always complained to UNBS for allowing substandard good flood the Ugandan market.

The Uganda National Bureau of Standards is a government agency, established by an Act of Parliament and is responsible for the formulation, promotion of the use of, and the enforcement of standards in protection of the environment, public health and safety for goods consumed by Ugandans either locally made or imported.

For imported goods, government a few years ago introduced the Pre-Export Verification of Conformity (PVoC) is supposed to assess and issue a certificate of conformity to demonstrate the compliance of products to international approved standards.

One of the categories of imports that must undergo PVoC are foods and food products where energy drinks fall.

“This category covers all edible products either raw or processed, and articles used in preparing them,” says UNBS on their website.

However, the findings by the National Drug Authority will raise a number of questions on the ability of UNBS to protect Ugandans from harmful products like the adulterated energy drinks and many other products that have flooded the Ugandan market.