Liberia extends recall of substandard, counterfeit medicines

A sampling study carried out earlier this year in Liberia has found that more than 50 per cent of antimalarial, antibiotic and painkiller medicines were either counterfeit or substandard.

The recently-created Liberia Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Authority ordered its first recall of medicines last month after identifying three counterfeit antimalarial products, and will now order additional recalls on the strength of the latest testing round.

LMHRA officials, with the assistance of the US Pharmacopeia's Promoting the Quality of Medicines (PQM) programme, collected 115 samples of commonly-used medicines from 'informal', public and private retail outlets in Liberia's capital Monrovia, and tested 56 of them using Minilabs (pictured) supplied by the Global Pharma Health Fund.

Among the findings were oral quinine and artesunate tablet formulations which were found to have no active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) after lab testing. Meanwhile, various other medicines - including amoxicillin tablets, chloroquine tablets, artemether injection, quinine suspension and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine tablets - failed visual inspections and were deemed either substandard or counterfeit. The results can be viewed on the GPHF website here.

General observations made as a result of the inspection included diversion of product from public to private and informal outlets and extremely poor storage conditions for medicines, which were often exposed to sun and dust and sold by untrained personnel.

"A hot spot for sale of fake drugs is Monrovia's main market and red light section in the city centre," noted the GPHF.