The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) says illicit trade in medicines is growing in South Africa, with unapproved weight-loss products, performance enhancers, codeine-based painkillers and skin-lightening products increasingly sold through social media, gyms, beauty outlets and other informal channels.
Pharmacists and healthcare professionals should expect to encounter patients already using products bought outside the regulated chain, particularly injectables presented as weight-loss treatments. SAHPRA is asking anyone who identifies an online facility selling medicines to report it for investigation, and says non-compliant suppliers face enforcement action coordinated with law enforcement and the South African Pharmacy Council. Companies whose brands are being imitated or diverted through these channels have a reporting route to the regulator.
Mokgadi Fafudi, SAHPRA’s head of regulatory compliance, attributed part of the growth to online promotion and to consumer aspiration around appearance. “People see things on social media, and they become gullible to those, and people are selling wrong information,” she said. “When you’re speaking about lifestyle, people want to appeal to look similar to certain people, certain figures… we see people, the influencers, for example, contributing immensely to this.”
Fafudi said consumers should obtain medicines and injectable products only from authorised healthcare professionals and pharmacies, and warned that products claiming to alter body shape, promote weight loss or enhance performance can carry serious risks where they have not been evaluated and approved. “This is about health. Then a person is gambling with their own health,” she said.
SAHPRA is working with law enforcement, the South African Pharmacy Council, government departments and digital platforms to disrupt illegal suppliers, and says it is launching its largest public awareness campaign to date. Fafudi noted the limits of domestic enforcement online: “Digital platforms are also very complex, and e-commerce, because some of these are not even hosted in our country. So, we also have to work with the digital communications department to help us pull some of these down.”
Consumers who suspect they have bought an illicit product are urged to report it through the regulator’s website or its whistleblower channels.
SAHPRA did not name individual products, brands or suppliers, publish seizure or case figures, or state whether adverse events linked to these products have been reported. The categories described span different regulatory problems: unregistered products with no marketing authorisation, falsified products misrepresenting their source, and scheduled medicines such as codeine diverted from legitimate supply. The regulator did not break down which predominates.
Source: Remarks by Mokgadi Fafudi, head of regulatory compliance at the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA), on The Clement Manyathela Show, 702, as reported by Eyewitness News, 13 August 2026 — Eyewitness News
