Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Analyzed the data: MWH. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. Poor-quality life-saving medicines are a major public health threat, particularly in settings with a weak regulatory environment.
Insufficient amounts of active pharmaceutical ingredients API endanger patient safety and may contribute to the development of drug resistance. In the case of malaria, concerns relate to implications for the efficacy of artemisinin-based combination therapies ACT. ACT has been introduced as first-line treatment but other drugs, such as primaquine for the treatment of P. This study investigated the quality of antimalarial drugs and selected antibiotics at all levels of the health facility supply chain in PNG.
Medicines were obtained from randomly sampled health facilities and selected warehouses and hospitals across PNG and analysed for API content using validated high performance liquid chromatography HPLC. According to the package label, Poor-quality medicines were found in Drug quality was unrelated to storage conditions. This study documents the presence of poor-quality medicines, particularly primaquine, throughout PNG.
Primaquine is the only available transmission-blocking antimalarial, likely to become important to prevent the spread of artemisinin-resistant P. The availability of poor-quality medicines reflects the lack of adequate quality control and regulatory mechanisms. Measures to stop the availability of poor-quality medicines should include limiting procurement to WHO prequalified products and implementing routine quality testing. Prompt and effective treatment of clinical episodes of malaria is one of the central pillars of malaria control programs [1].
It is critical for preventing progression to severe disease or death and reducing the reservoir of Plasmodium parasites in the population. The quality of antimalarial medicines has come under scrutiny after an increasing number of reports identified poor-quality products in malaria-endemic countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America [3] β [6].
