ALL medicines entering Bahrain will be soon scanned for their authenticity, as the country works to finalise a state-of-the-art system for tracking and tracing pharmaceutical products … in the latest move to prevent fake pills and syrups reaching the market.

From June 1 onwards, stakeholders such as the Customs Directorate, agents, distributors, import pharmacies and dispensers will be required to scan the 2D barcode of drugs from the port until they reach the patient.

This is part of the pharmaceutical track and trace system’s third and final step, the ‘Aggregation and Blockchain Validation’ phase. “Once these are done and the customs update the system, we will go fully live with the track-and-trace system by 2023,” said National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA) chief executive Dr Mariam Al Jalahma. Read full article.