MDB No 12 counterfeit medicines.

Read the latest MDB – Medical Director’s Bulletin – published 16 March 2018 about counterfeit medicines.

Here’s an extract:
Many individual small studies have been done over the years looking at the problems of SSFFC medicines. Fortunately, a systematic review of this literature has been undertaken. The top lines from this systematic review are as follows:

The median prevalence of substandard / counterfeit medicines was 28.5% (range 11-48%) across 44 prevalence studies in 25 resource poor countries.
The majority of these studies reviewed antimalarial medications though antibiotics and analgesics were also studied. Only two studies included paediatric formulations in their samples.
93% of studies contained samples with inadequate amounts of active ingredients.
The prevalence of substandard / counterfeit antibiotics was significantly higher when purchased from unlicensed outlets (p<0.0001). Read the full bulletin here.