Trail Blazing in Kudat

The map above is the District of Kudat, one of the 5 main district in Sabah. Our campaign in this district has been progressing steadily since 2004. Most of the main town located in this locality namely Kota Marudu, Pitas, Matunggong and Kudat has been visited except for Banggi island. Initially the consumer education campaign starts off from the main towns targeting health facilities like medicine shops, supermarkets, medical halls and groceries stores. Whereas Clinics and Pharmacy in these towns had been monitored since the 90's. The campaign has progress steadily to sundries shop in the outskirts of town. Lately there have been a trend of irresponsible parties to distribute unregistered health product to the rural areas. This is due to the dwindling market for their goods in the town area due to increase awareness in registered product sale. It has been encouraging to note that most retailers in the town areas know about health product registration and sale. This can be partly attributed to the efforts by licenced wholesalers who themselves have been informed about the product registration during a campaign blitz in 2004 by the department. This is an example of smart partnership between the enforcement agency and the bussiness community namely health product licensed wholesaler. We need to work together hand in hand for the journey ahead. Here are some graphic glimpses of our campaign trail in Kudat. Sundry shop owners are usually honest people trying to earn

a living and they usually ignorant about the do and don't of medicine sales

Note the simple design of the shop.. wooden structure on stilts with wire mesh

Sundry shop being far from town becomes a multi-goods stores that sells anything from diesel (for generators), to cooking gas to medicines and other daily necessities. This makes them perfect targets for unregistered medicines supplier

One of the unregistered product laced with steroids found in one of the shops in Kudat. It's called Maajun Kuat and medicines sold in this form we called "Ubat Papan" has been banned by the authorities since 2005