The Ministry of Health has discovered tainted and falsified dietary supplements in Cayo, Orange Walk, Stann Creek, and Belize districts. The affected products include Artri King, Artribon, Artri Ajo King, and Vitafer. They have been found to contain undeclared substances that can affect the health of those who ingest them. MOHW is now advising the public to refrain from using them and to cooperate with their investigation if you have bought them.
The Director Of Public Health And Wellness explained via Zoom how they learnt about the tainted supplements.
Dr Melissa Diaz, Director of Public Health and Wellness, MOHW
"It came about with one of our clinicians were seeing patients with certain symptoms and after looking at what the patients were taking, I think there were two patients in total, they found out that patients were taking these supplements so we went back and looked at alerts and we did, we have a surveillance team through the drug inspection unit that they would comb Facebook, look at Instagram, look at what is being advertised in the public, visit market places, etc. and see what's being sold. So they did their investigation and found that these products were available in Belize and were being marketed, especially on social media and in smaller businesses. Because of this and because of the alerts, once we looked at our file and our system we saw that COFEPRIS did send out the alert with regards to some of these supplements and so did the Mexican agency and so did FDA."
"Because of the drug inspection unit did their surveillance and found that it's available in Belize, our next step or what has already been done is that we have contacted these persons and we remove all this medication from the person and try to find out the source as best as possible. So usually the investigation would include doing interviews with the persons who got these medications, many times the vendors themselves are uncertain of how these medications enter the country or where they got it from and many times it's smaller amounts that are being sold in the market places, etc. so it's to educate the public, educate the vendors and ensure that we do our investigation to determine where these falsified and substandard products are entering the country."
"At this point, the first three has one particular medication and Vitafer has a separate totally different medication. In terms of the vitafer, the best advice at this point is do not take it, it can have side effects that can be very severe so we're saying do not take it at all but there's nothing that you need to do at this point. For the others that have another substance in it, they can cause a lot more long term side effects so we would advise of course stop taking it and report where you got it from, try to work with the Ministry of Health for us to remove all from the shelves and from vendors throughout the country."
Anyone who has encountered these or other questionable health products is encouraged to report them to the Ministry of Health & Wellness at drugalerts@health.gov.bz or by calling +501 - 880-2363.
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