The US Pharmacopeial Convention’s (USP’s) Center for Pharmaceutical Advancement and Training (CePAT) in Accra, Ghana opened a new pharmaceutical microbiology laboratory to help keep substandard medicines far away from sick patients.
The state-of-the-art laboratory will train pharmaceutical and regulatory professionals to identify medicines contaminated with microorganisms, such as bacteria. Such testing has historically been a challenge in low-resource settings in Africa.
Since 2013, CePAT has been providing high quality analytical and training services to help develop human resource capabilities across the continent and, ultimately, improve the capacity of regulators and manufacturers at the local level to ensure pharmaceutical quality. Since its launch, CePAT has trained approximately 190 professional from 32 countries. CePAT aims to build a cadre of well-trained professionals that are proficient in critical aspects of regulatory, quality assurance and quality control processes.
Millions of patients in Africa who rely on medicines to get well can benefit from having a skilled workforce and an expanded center to test the quality of medicines. As Dr. Patrick Lukulay, USP’s Vice President of Global Health Impact Programs in Africa, discusses in an Op-Ed in Uganda’s New Vision (link below), with as much as a one-third of the drug supply on the continent estimated to be substandard or fake, patients’ chances of getting a product that doesn’t meet quality standards—and are unsafe and likely ineffective—are quite high.
Read the full Op-Ed to learn more about what Dr. Lukulay thinks CePAT can do to help ensure that only quality-assured, safe and effective medicines reach the people in Africa:
- "We must do more to improve the quality of medicines in Africa," by Patrick Lukulay, published February 10, 2016 in New Vision
To learn more, please download our press release. For additional information, photos from the inaugural event, or to schedule an interview with one of USP’s thought-leaders, please contact Latifa Boyce at lmb@usp.org.
