Citizen vigilance in medicines quality

Posted on 31 July 2009

Quality matters: anti-malarial drug in Ghana found to have no active ingredient.

A counterfeit anti-malarial drug was discovered recently in Ghana by a vigilant citizen who then reported it to a sentinel site set up to monitor medicine quality. The citizen was suspicious about the quality of the Novartis Coartem product, an artemisinin-based combination therapy recommended by the World Health Organization for treating ‘uncomplicated’ malaria.

Counterfeit medicines are a huge threat to the health of people in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa, highlighting the need for transparency and disclosure around medicine quality at all levels. This is a priority area for the work of the Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA) in Ghana. Fake medicines are dangerous. They fail to deliver appropriate treatment to the patient, putting lives at risk, and they also contribute to growing strains of drug resistant illnesses such as malaria and TB.

In this case, a local citizen brought a suspicious sample of Coartem to one of five sentinel sites set up in Ghana to monitor and test medicine quality. After failing initial testing at the site, further testing by Ghana Foods and Drug Board (FDB) confirmed the medicine was counterfeit. The USP DQI Program established the sentinel sites in coordination with the FDB and other partners with funding from USAID/Ghana under the President's Malaria Initiative.

The Ghana FDB is currently seizing the drugs from wholesale and retail pharmacies as well as from licensed chemical sellers and is warning patients about the presence of the counterfeit Coartem tablets.

'We are pleased to see this compelling example of how the Medicines Quality Monitoring programme established by the USP DQI Program is directly and positively impacting the health of patients in Ghana,' said Patrick Lukulay, PhD, director of the programme. 'In this case, a local citizen brought the questionable medicine to one of the sentinel sites, which demonstrates one of the key ways we hoped the sites would work by becoming an integrated part of the local community that citizens would feel comfortable and confident going to with concerns.'

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