Chekkit, a Nigerian anti-counterfeiting startup, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Public Health in Afghanistan to help suppress, and if possible, eliminate the issue of fake medications in the country. The firm plans to achieve this through its blockchain-based system.
The brand, which was formed at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology in Accra, has developed a medium through which the movement, and the parties involved in the transfer of products from warehouses to the final consumer is monitored.
Chekkit is a consumer feedback analytical tool that perform anti-counterfeiting and asset tracking functions. It generates and assigns unique tamper-proof ID labels, which can be either numeric codes or QR codes.
The unique labels are installed on packaged foods and beverage products for supply chain and feedback tracking.
The service the startup wants to deliver in Afghanistan will commence with a three-month trial period. Chekkit aims to track and verify the authenticity of all drugs sold in the country using its product authentication technology.
To allow for verifications to be made before drugs are purchased, Chekkit looks to tag over 80,000 pharmaceutical products in the Afghan market with smart labels.
Also, the firm has provided the nation’s Ministry of Health with dedicated hand-held devices that can be used to confirm the genuineness of products at the point of entry into the county.
‘’For long, the Afghan Ministry of Health has been in search of effective ways of verifying the authenticity of drugs imported into the nation. Now, Chekkit has provided the country with an effective means to check for counterfeit medical products. The startup believes this initiative will reduce the volume of counterfeit products in the country,’’ said Dare Odumade, CEO and co-founder of Chekkit.