A JUST completed research study has documented the presence of poor-quality medicines, particularly the anti-malaria drug primaquine, throughout Papua New Guinea.
The research team studied the quality of antimalarial drugs and antibiotics in PNG and made its report public last week.
The report says that “poor-quality life-saving medicines are a major public health threat, particularly in settings with a weak regulatory environment”, presumably like PNG.
It adds that “insufficient amounts of active pharmaceutical ingredients endanger patient safety and may contribute to the development of drug resistance.”
The team obtained medicines from randomly sampled health facilities and warehouses and hospitals across PNG.
The drugs were then analysed using high performance liquid chromatography.
Of 360 samples from 60 providers, more than 10% did not contain appropriate contents.
The team reported that “according to the package label, 86.5% of poor-quality samples originated from India” and “poor-quality medicines were found in 48.3% of providers at all levels of the supply chain. “
“This study documents the presence of poor-quality medicines, particularly primaquine, throughout PNG,” the report said.
“The availability of poor-quality medicines reflects the lack of adequate quality control and regulatory mechanisms.
“Measures to stop the availability of poor-quality medicines should include limiting procurement to WHO prequalified products and implementing routine quality testing,” it concluded.
Hetzel MW, Page-Sharp M, Bala N, Pulford J, Betuela I, et al. (2014) Quality of Antimalarial Drugs and Antibiotics in Papua New Guinea: A Survey of the Health Facility Supply Chain. PLoS ONE 9(5): e96810. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0096810