News Desk
MALE’ — The Maldives Food and Drug Authority has published a list of 21 medicines being imported and sold in the country without regulatory approval, warning that their quality and safety cannot be guaranteed and that their use poses unexpected health risks.
Eight of the 21 drugs on the list are sexual or performance enhancers. Ozempic, the weight-loss and diabetes drug that has swept global markets, is also on the list.
The MFDA said the drugs are being brought in by importers who have not obtained the required permissions and are being sold through online platforms and ordinary shops. Under Maldivian regulations, any medicine must be registered with the authority and included in the approved drug list before it can legally be imported or sold.
None of the 21 listed products meet that requirement.
The authority was direct about the consequence. Ingredients in unregistered products are not verified. There is no quality check, no safety assessment, no oversight of what is actually inside what is being sold. “Importing and selling such unknown drugs and pharmaceutical products is likely to pose unexpected health risks to users,” the MFDA said. That warning carries weight only if the agency has the capacity to back it up. Whether the MFDA has an in-house laboratory capable of testing seized products for ingredient verification is a question worth asking. If it does not, the authority can name the drugs and issue the prohibition, but it cannot tell you what is actually in the box being sold on the Facebook marketplace. The statement warns of unknown risks. The irony is that without testing capacity, the risks remain exactly that.
The Maldives has a rigorous drug approval system, managed by a team that has been in place for a long time and operates with considerable bureaucratic thoroughness. Getting a medicine onto the approved list takes time and documentation. That process exists for good reason. What the MFDA list reveals is that a parallel informal market has grown up around it, stocked with products that have bypassed every part of that process and are reaching consumers through phone screens and shop shelves with no checks at all.
