Cambodia ups the ante against counterfeits
This article was originally published in Scrip
Cambodia has raised surveillance and seizure efforts against substandard and counterfeit medicines in the country, identifying five manufacturers whose products were found to be fake.
Cambodia's ministry of health, whose efforts are supported by the US Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), has over the recent past initiated the closure of illegal health facilities and enforced action against importers of counterfeit medicines. Officials have also made large seizures of counterfeit and illegal medicines in and around the capital, Phnom Penh, with police action focusing on counterfeit artemisinin monotherapies for malaria.
A statement from the USP said that manufacturers whose products were found to be fake or of poor quality carried package labels of Thailand or China. They include VKP Pharmaceutical of Thailand and the Chinese firms China Southern Pharmaceutical, Shen Wei Pharmaceutical, Fu Li Pharmaceutical and SG Pharmaceutical.
The USP is a non-profit scientific organisation that sets standards for the quality, purity, strength and identity of drugs, food ingredients and dietary supplements. Its drug standards are legally enforceable in the US and are used in more than 130 countries. Cambodia's ministry of health receives technical assistance to identify the fakes from the promoting the quality of medicines (PQM) programme that is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and administered by the USP.
The PQM programme has been working with Cambodia since 2003 and provides training on sampling protocols, testing techniques and data reporting at 12 sentinel sites in the Southeast Asian nation. Cambodia has also launched widespread awareness campaigns against counterfeits, substandard medicines and illegal health facilities, also supported by the PQM programme.
Cambodia's medicine quality monitoring programme is implemented in collaboration with the national malaria control programme, the department of drugs and food, and the National Health Products Quality Control Center laboratory and provincial health departments, among others.
Last year, Ghana recalled 13 antimalarials following the uncovering of substandard and counterfeit versions of these products across the country, as part of a surveillance programme of the Ghana Food and Drugs Board (FDB) in collaboration with the USP and USAID.
The USP had earlier said that it expects to assist the governments of African nations such as Madagascar, Senegal and Uganda on certain technical aspects, following the detection of a large proportion of substandard antimalarials there as part of a study by the World Health Organization and the PQM programme (scripintelligence.com, 23 February 2010).
In 2009 the initiative had uncovered a counterfeit version of Novartis' Coartem (artemether/lumefantrine).