Home// - Franck Verzefé
Are you sure you want to exit?
Any unsave changes will be lost.
Solution name: True-Spec
Franck Verzefé
Health Systems Strengthening
Product or technological
Proof of concept
Urban
It is estimated that up to 72,000 to 169,000 children die each year from pneumonia due to substandard and falsified antibiotics in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, there are alarming rates of malaria deaths every year due to substandard and falsified antimalarial medicines in this region. Analytical devices to detect false drugs are expensive and mostly imported. Furthermore, there is a dire absence of the systemised collection of high-quality data on falsified and sub-standard medicines in Africa.
Franck Verzefé is a young 25-year-old African from Cameroon who is passionate about nanotechnology and bioinformatics. During his first academic year, he discovered the death toll caused by the traffic of falsified drugs and this lead him to start True-Spec Africa. True-Spec is a portable device that uses artificial intelligence to allow hospitals, pharmacies, pharmaceutical laboratories and quality control centres to verify if certain drugs are genuine or falsified. This process takes less than 20 seconds and can be conducted anytime and anywhere. This solution allows the user to save money, as well as build a database to help estimate the true impact of substandard or falsified medical products and to collect, structure and systematically analyse accurate, reliable and quality data for Africa.