Africa is the dumping ground for 40% of the world’s fake medicines - WHO

desmond frimpong

November 28, 2017 6:39 PM

Since 2013, WHO has received 1500 reports of cases of substandard or falsified products. Of these, antimalarials and antibiotics are the most commonly reported.

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It implies that people taking medicines fail to treat or prevent disease.

This development goes beyond mere money wasting for individuals and health systems that purchase them because the substandard or falsified medical products can cause serious illness or even death.

Most of the reports (42%) come from the WHO African Region, 21% from the WHO Region of the Americas, and 21% from the WHO European Region.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General says “substandard and falsified medicines particularly affect the most vulnerable communities. Imagine a mother who gives up food or other basic needs to pay for her child’s treatment, unaware that the medicines are substandard or falsified, and then that treatment causes her child to die. This is unacceptable. Countries have agreed on measures at the global level – it is time to translate them into tangible action.”

According to WHO, it has received 1500 reports of cases of substandard or falsified products since 2013 and antimalarials and antibiotics are the most commonly reported.

WHO has received reports of substandard or falsified medical products ranging from cancer treatment to contraception. They are not confined to high-value medicines or well-known brand names and are split almost evenly between generic and patented products.

In conjunction with the first report from the Global Surveillance and Monitoring System published Niv 28, WHO is publishing research that estimates a 10.5% failure rate in all medical products used in low- and middle-income countries.

The scale of the problem is hard to quantify precisely, but a WHO pooled analysis of 100 studies from 2007 to 2016, covering more than 48,000 samples, showed 10.5 per cent of drugs in low and middle-income countries to be fake or substandard.

The study says deaths from malaria could be caused every year by substandard and falsified antimalarials in sub-Saharan Africa, with a cost of US$ 38.5 million (21.4 million – 52.4 million) to patients and health providers for further care due to failure of treatment.

Globalization is making it harder to regulate medical products. Many falsifiers manufacture and print packaging in different countries, shipping components to a final destination where they are assembled and distributed. Sometimes, offshore companies and bank accounts have been used to facilitate the sale of falsified medicines.

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desmond frimpong