Tanzania study finds confusion on fake meds reporting

A survey of healthcare providers (HCPs) in Tanzania has found that while awareness of substandard and falsified (SF) medical products is fairly high, there is widespread uncertainty about how to report cases.

The poll of 773 medical doctors, pharmacists, nurse officers, dentists, and medical laboratory scientists found that 53.8 per cent of them said they had no idea about the reporting tools that need to be used for SF products, and only 5.9 per cent used the correct form to report them.

The researchers who carried out the study, from the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, point out in a preprint paper that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that healthcare providers have high knowledge of SF medical product identification as well as reporting procedures.

Overall, 81.9 per cent of the HCPs were deemed to have good knowledge of SF products, with pharmacists performing the best, which the authors say runs counter to prior studies suggesting low awareness.

“Regulatory authorities in the country are recommended to ensure the availability of standard operating procedures (SOPs) for identifying and reporting [SF] products in all health facilities,” they write in the paper.

Among the other findings are that only 13.2 per cent of respondents reported learning about these products at university, which suggests that higher learning institutions should include modules on SF products in their curricula.

This is a global issue, but it is especially prevalent in African countries, where more than 30 per cent of the pharmaceuticals supplied are counterfeit or substandard, according to a study published last year.

The study suggests that there has been an increase in the number of reported cases of medicine falsification in Tanzania in recent years, with the most counterfeited drugs being antimalarials, followed by antibiotics.

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