At a time when quality of Indian medicines is being questioned, a WHO agency has found that only 2% of the medical products in Southeast Asia, including India, were substandard or spurious against a global figure of 10.5%.
Effectively, it means medicines and medical products available in India are safer than what is available in American and European markets.
Nearly 10.5% of the samples collected by WHO’s Global Surveillance and Monitoring System for substandard and falsified medical products (GSMS) between 2013-17 failed quality test, says the report released on Tuesday. It defines falsified medical products as those that misrepresent identity, composition or source.
In the past spotlight has largely been on lifestyle medicines such as slimming tablets, the WHO findings show that everything — from cancer medicines to contraception, antibiotics to vaccines — faces a quality problem across the world.
Substandard drugs and vaccines up the risk of several diseases becoming difficult to treat and the world left grappling with antimicrobial resistance, which is a growing concern.
“There is clear evidence that resistance to the most important antimalarial medicine, artemisinin, first appeared in a part of the world where at one point between 38 and 90% of the artemisinin medicines on the market were substandard or falsified,” says the report.
Nearly 1,500 cases from across the world, including India, were reported to the surveillance team. The magnitude of the problem could be bigger as not all countries reported cases.
“There is clear evidence that resistance to the most important antimalarial medicine, artemisinin, first appeared in a part of the world where at one point between 38 and 90% of the artemisinin medicines on the market were substandard or falsified,” says the report.
Nearly 1,500 cases from across the world, including India, were reported to the surveillance team. The magnitude of the problem could be bigger as not all countries reported cases.
