Cambodian study finds 3 per cent of medicines are counterfeit

The results of a medicine sampling study in Cambodia reveals that just 3 per cent of products were counterfeit, although between 5 and 9 per cent failed HPLC or dissolution-based quality testing.

That relatively low figure compares to historical estimates of 4 per cent to 90 per cent in studies reported since 2000, according to the researchers, who were from Kanazawa and Nagasaki Universities in Japan and Cambodia's National Health Product Quality Control Center.

A total of 710 samples of a wide range of commonly-used medicines were collected by the researchers in three tranches (in 2006, 2007 and 2008) at pharmacies and other forms of retail outlet in both rural and urban areas.

A little over half (55 per cent) of the samples collected had their packaging intact, but in 45 per cent of cases it was open. Counterfeits were 20 times more likely to be encountered among open containers than closed ones, were more likely to fail quality testing and were encountered more often in rural outlets, according to the researchers.

Authenticity testing was carried out on a subset of 513 samples, and the team discovered 15 fakes. The counterfeited products were mostly unregistered in Cambodia and included one sample of albendazole, four of amoxicillin, two of ampicillin, six of mebendazole and two of paracetamol. 

Four of the counterfeits were labelled as originating from China, six were from India, two were from Malaysia and there was one each from Hong Kong, Cambodia and the UK.

The work was published online in the journal Pharmaceutical Research on October 1.


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