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Information For:
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Background Papers
Reports from the first two rounds of testing in the USP DQI Antimalarial Drug Quality Monitoring Project disclose counterfeit drugs circulating in Mekong marketplaces. Participating countries—Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Yunnan Province of China—are taking action to stop the flow of counterfeit and substandard drugs.
In 2002, USP DQI began monitoring the quality of antimalarials in the Mekong region. The monitoring sites included the Yunnan Province of China, which is responsible for about one-half of officially reported malaria cases in China. Overall, about five percent of all samples failed the tests. Consequently, government agencies quickly had fake artesunates removed from all drug outlets; an important action since artesunate remains one of the few antimalarials which have not succumbed to resistance.
Working cooperatively with national governments and health professionals in all four regions of USAID intervention, USP DQI strives to facilitate and strengthen drug quality systems and information access, thus improving public health. USP DQI encourages collaborative efforts to meet this goal by offering technical assistance; developing training programs for medicine testing methods, drug registration procedures, and GMP compliance; and setting up drug information centers.
Poor quality medicines do not meet official standards for strength, quality, purity, packaging, and/or labeling. They may be legally registered innovator or generic products, or they could be counterfeits—deliberately mislabeled for identity, strength or source. Whether counterfeit or unintentionally substandard, poor quality drugs have serious health implications including treatment failure, adverse effects, increased morbidity, mortality, development of drug resistance, and wasted resources.
Access to good-quality, essential medicines is a necessity for every country in order to protect the health of its people. In principle, all medicines should be both safe and effective, but recent evidence has shown that this is not always the case. For example, medicines of poor quality appear to be widely available, especially in Asia where between 10-35% of medicines are either improperly made or illegally produced. |
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