Strong Government Controls Protect Central African Anti-Malarial Meds Says WHO
The World Health Organization released a report on February 25, 2011 that identified substandard anti-malarial medications as one third of all in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania.
The rate of failure was highest in Nigeria, with 2 out of three samples failing WHO quality tests, reports The Science and Development Network. Following close behind, Ghana and Cameroon both had failure rates of greater than 1 in 3, while Ethiopia Kenya and Tanzania had failure rates of less than 11%. More details on other African countries can be found within the report which is available on the World Health Organization’s website.
Jitko Sabatova, the WHO’s technical officer responsible for pre-qualification of quality control labs said that countries with the greatest numbers of domestic suppliers had higher failure rates .
“It seems that regulators are focusing mainly on the quality of imports,” said Sabatova.
The WHO said the results should not be regarded as “catastrophic” in health terms but that it showed gaps in regulation and quality control.
Elodie Jambert, pharmaceutical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, in Geneva, told The Science and Development Network that “The WHO must help to strengthen the national medicines regulatory authorities.” She added that countries with weak national medicines regulatory agencies delegate quality assurance functions to procurement agencies, which have may have conflicting demands placed upon them to both evaluate medicine quality as well as buy at the lowest price, therefore compromising on quality for price effectiveness.
“Procurement agencies may have the technical knowledge to assess the quality of the medicines but often have pressure from the market to buy medicines of the lowest possible price and their commercial interests may conflict with quality assurance policy,” she said.