Addressing a lack of quality standards for a significant proportion of essential medicines, the Global Health Standards Program is developing monographs and reference standards for essential medicines that are widely used outside of the United States. Stemming from its work under the USAID-funded PQM program and the Chlorhexidine Working Group, chaired by PATH, USP developed and released its first global health monograph for chlorhexidine digluconate topical gel, an antiseptic medicine used for post-natal umbilical cord care in low-resource settings. Read more about the Global Health Standards Program.
Established by USP to facilitate South-South collaboration, these networks provide laboratories with a forum for sharing best practices on medicines quality issues at regional and national levels. OMCL networks offer unique inter-laboratory testing activities for participating labs to improve laboratory performance as well as harmonize their drug analysis methodologies.
Recognizing the vital importance of quality-assured medicines in safeguarding public health, USP launched the Complimentary Standards Program (CSP) to provide eligible National Quality Control Laboratories with discounted documentary and reference standards to increase their capacity to test the quality of medicines for their citizens.
USP’s Medicines Quality Database currently contains the results of MQM activities established through PQM collaborations, and the information included is approved for dissemination by the authorities of participating countries. The Poor-Quality Medicines Alert contains information from multiple sources, either reported to or identified by PQM within the last year.
Millions of people around the world lack access to quality medicines they can trust, putting lives at risk, costing economies billions and undermining decades of hard-earned health progress. The Medicines We Can Trust campaign is raising awareness about poor-quality and counterfeit medicines to make sure everyone has access to safe, quality medicines.