Falsified and Sub-standard Medicines: Danger of Death – Commonplace in developing countries

Falsified and Sub-standard Medicines: Danger of Death  – Unusual in the industrialized countries   – Commonplace in developing countries
Jacques Pinel was a pharmacist working with MSF.  He devoted his career with MSF to improving the supply and use of quality essential medicines.
He had almost completed this publication when he died in 2015.
Jacques’ close co-workers and companions therefore decided to finish the document in Jacques’ spirit so as to make it available to as many people as possible. The outcome of this process had been  made public in French in August 2016, and it is has now been translated in English.
The first chapter is devoted to explaining a few basic notions for a better understanding of the topic of medicines, their quality and their legal and regulatory environment.
The second chapter explains how a medicine can be of poor quality and the distinction to be made between falsified (counterfeit or frankly “fake” medicines) and “sub-standard” medicines.
The third chapter examines how the upheavals in the way the world is politically organized and the evolution of the international market have affected the quality of medicines available to the world.
And finally, chapter four explains what measures must be taken to improve the situation for the most deprived countries and the essential role played by the World Health Organization (WHO) with its Pre-qualification Programme. Jacques was a fervent supporter of this WHO Pre-qualification Programme. He hoped that the responsibility of the Pre-qualification Programme -initially targeting the antiretrovirals, TB-medicines and the artemisinin-combined therapies-would be widened to include all the medicines on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines. You can download the publication here