While the global vaccination effort to curb the spread of COVID-19 continues to ramp up worldwide, access to COVID-19 vaccines, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, remains staggeringly low. In fact, low- and middle-income countries received less than one percent of available doses.
I think girls everywhere would like to see the day when we do not talk about great women scientists but just great scientists. Being a woman shouldn’t make your achievements any more or less impressive ~ Serena Piervincenzi
Medicines quality is at the center of CePAT’s work. Equipped with a new lab and expanded capabilities, CePAT is now tackling barriers to quality and hopes to change the odds that African’s will receive quality-assured medicines.
Patrick Lukulay, USP’s VP of GHIP–Africa, discusses plans to leverage his new post in Accra, Ghana to advance pharmaceutical quality in Africa. Countering fallacies in drug quality through advocacy and working to help build an enabling environment that can sustain systems for effective regulation of medical products, he says, are needed for this to happen.
Poor quality medicines are the source of an alarming, but often overlooked global health crisis. A report from the International Policy Network estimates that 700,000 people die every year from fake anti-malarial and tuberculosis drugs alone.
Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) marked a major milestone in the fight against substandard and poor quality drugs by acheiving internationally recognized ISO 17025 accreditation.
Like most African countries, the challenges facing the Zambian pharmaceutical industry are vast. But under the leadership of Ms. Esnart Mwape, Director General of the Zambia Medicines Regulatory Authority, challenges such as counterfeit drugs are being addressed, as the Authority respositions itself to take charge of the market. Read more.
In Liberia, sellers of poor-quality medicines are capitalizing on public fears about Ebola. Learn what the Liberia Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Authority is doing about it and how the Promoting the Quality of Medicines Program--a collaborative effort between USAID and USP--is playing a role.
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