Vhickyem/DataVerse-Africa---PharmaShield

# PHARMASHIELD: Fake Drug Detection via Pharmacy Sales Analysis ## Project Overview PharmaShield is an unsupervised Machine learning-based detection system, designed to detect the distribution of fake drugs in Nigeria. This approach leverages an anomaly detection algorithm to spot irregularities in the retail supply of drugs, thereby providing a less costly, faster, scalable and proactive method to flag suspicious cases. ## Project Background Counterfeit and substandard drugs pose a serious health threat across African markets, take for example, Nigeria, where this problem is deeply rooted and dangerous. According to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), about 15-30% of medicines in circulation are counterfeit, most especially in rural and semi-urban markets where regulatory oversight is weaker due to the slow and ineffective traditional manual inspection techniques. The usage of these drugs in consideration, may lead to: * Inefficiency of the drug against the use case * Harmful Side effects * Drug Resistance, Thereby, leading to an increased Morbidity and Mortality rate, Economic risks and loss of trust in the healthcare systems and in the ability of the institution to protect the interest of the concerned subjects. ## Problem Statement The circulation of counterfeit drugs poses a critical threat to public health, supply chain integrity and trust in healthcare systems. Current detection methods used are traditional manual techniques, which are slow, not-scalable, costly and ineffective. There is, therefore, a need for a data-driven approach that can flag suspicious patterns in drug distribution and pricing, enabling earlier investigation and intervention. ## Objectives ### Primary Objective: To support regulatory agencies in reducing the circulation of counterfeit medicines in Nigeria by at least 10% within 24 months, through the development of a data-driven anomaly detection system that identifies suspicious patterns in drug d …