By DELPHINE ZULU –

A LUSAKA business executive has been cleared by the Lusaka magistrates’ court of the offence of dealing in drugs that he alleged could cure HIV/AIDS.
The magistrates’ court dismissed all the five counts of manufacturing, marketing, advertising, supplying and selling of Topvein, a herbal drug that allegedly cures HIV/AIDS, which the accused Mendez Fernandez, 40, was facing.
Magistrate Humphrey Chitalu cleared Fernandez and his co-accused person, Pauline Favour Kamanga, on grounds that the charges were bad at law and prejudicial to the interests of the accused persons.
The duo was alleged to have manufactured, marketed, supplied and sold medicines without a pharmaceutical licence contrary to Section 33 (10 (2) of the Medicines and Allied Substances Act Number 3 of 2013 of the Laws of Zambia.
“As such I order and direct that the said five counts with which the accused are charged be and are hereby dismissed,’’ he said.
Mr Chitalu said Topvein could not be considered as medicine because it did not fall under the ambit of medicines and it lacked certain standards to be called medicine or herbal medicine.
He said Topvein could only be called a medicine if in the discretion of the authority the same had been declared as such and fell within the categories specified under Section 40 and must be prescribed by a statutory instrument.
“Section 40 of the Medicines and Allied Substances Act Number 3 of 2013 provides that the categories of medicines to which this part applies are prescription medicines only, pharmacy medicines and general sale.
“These standards did not fall in this category,” Mr Chitalu said.