Trouble is brewing in the Ghana market for Bliss GVS Pharma, over an anti-malarial product sold by it in the African country.

Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority has said that it black-listed Bliss from “manufacturing of medicines and other medicinal products for the Ghanaian market.”

The company had made a fake anti-malarial medicine (Gsunate plus suppositories), which was imported into the Ghana market. The efficacy and safety of the product had not been checked since there had not been a clinical trial study to justify the use of this product for malaria, the Ghana FDA said.

The regulator further mentions that a director with Bliss had “confessed to the FDA that this anti-malarial medicine is not used for treatment of malaria in children in India. The Director of Bliss GVS Pharma Ltd, India also admitted that the Gsunate Plus Suppository is a fake anti-malarial medicine,” the FDA note said.

A Bliss representative, speaking on conditions of anonymity and without getting into the details, denied any wrong-doing on its part.

>jyothi.datta@thehindu.co.in