Large market share for non-quality-assured malaria medicines in Africa
Thursday, May 25, 2017
A new study of malaria medicine quality in 8 sub-Saharan African countries has found a large and potentially growing market for non-quality-assured (QA) malaria treatments—medicines not pre-approved by global health organizations – as much as 20% of the private-sector market in Kenya, and 42% in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As one of the most comprehensive recent studies relating to medicine quality in the region, the findings provide new insights for patients, researchers, policy makers and malaria control programs because QA status is often linked to the quality of medicines – which can impact patient health and safety, malaria control efforts and artemisinin drug efficacy.
The study, conducted in the private and public sectors of Benin, DRC, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, was published today in a Malaria Journal article titled ‘Do anti-malarials in Africa meet quality standards? The market penetration of non-quality assured artemisinin combination therapy in eight African countries’. Researchers measured the availability and market share of medicines not pre-approved under World Health Organization (WHO), Global Fund or European Medicines Agency (EMA) quality assurance programs.
Source: Medical Xpress (link opens in a new window)
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