Benin: the painkiller Kinal is a must in family medicine cabinets

In Benin’s pharmacies, Kinal painkiller, one of the flagship products of PPM laboratories, is often out of stock. It is not a question of a failure in the chain of distribution but of the consequence of the massive demand for this product intended for adults and children of more than 15 years for the symptomatic treatment of the pains of light intensity such as headaches, dental pains, aches and pains, myalgia and others, to moderate and/or fever.

The Syaro agency, headed by Mr Sylvain Sehou, has been entrusted by PPM Laboratories to promote Kinal in this country. At the same time as introducing it to prescribers, the agency worked for over two years to make it part of the family pharmacopoeia.  “Thus, to begin with, we targeted dockworkers, masons, zem drivers (i.e. motorcycle cab drivers), people who do heavy work, merchants and market ladies, to whom we devoted two days of work per week to offer each of them free tablets of the product while explaining the indications and dosage and, of course, recommending that they go to a pharmacy to obtain it”, explains Sylvain Sehou.

Today, Kinal is selling “like hotcakes”, he notes, “because the majority of Beninese now have one or two blister packs of the product in their medicine cabinet for family use while “pharmacies are scrambling not to run out of stock despite the large quantities ordered by wholesalers”.