A significant study suggests that up to 25% of medications in Africa may be counterfeit or of poor quality, raising concerns about a potentially fatal issue that could be causing the deaths of countless patients.

Researchers from Ethiopia's Bahir Dar University examined 27 papers included in the evaluation and discovered that 1,639 of the 7,508 pharmaceutical samples were deemed to be subpar or fabricated after failing at least one quality test.

According to Claudia Martínez, head of research at the non-profit Access to Medicine Foundation in Amsterdam, the findings seriously threaten public health.

The human cost of counterfeit and subpar medications is estimated to be as high as 500,000 deaths annually in sub-Saharan Africa, according to estimates released by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime last year.

“If patients are getting medicines that are substandard or outright fake, it can result in their treatment failing or even preventable deaths,” Martinez said.

"Falsified medicines" are ones that purposefully falsify their identity, composition, or source, whereas "substandard medicines" are those that are authorized but do not fulfill quality criteria.

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Highest percentage of counterfeit drugs in Malawi

According to a World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson, the most often counterfeited medications in Africa include antibiotics and antimalarial drugs.

Antibiotics that are subpar or counterfeited may have an improper active component or dosage, which can result in treatment failure and the survival of resistant strains. According to the WHO, these kinds of products are probably contributing to the rise in antibiotic resistance.

The analysis revealed that Malawi has the highest percentage of counterfeit and subpar medications.

According to Martinez, a number of circumstances contributed to the issue, which prevented patients from having access to necessary medications.

She added, “Pharma supply chains in many low- and middle-income countries are often complex, inefficient, and fragmented; the region relies heavily on a limited number of suppliers for essential medicines, and many countries face significant challenges in procuring products in time and effectively policing the quality of products in the market.”

According to Martínez, the presence of several intermediaries in the distribution of goods throughout the continent facilitated the entry of subpar or counterfeit medications into the supply chain.

A prior WHO survey revealed almost one in ten medical products in developing nations were either subpar or fabricated, with reports of these products originating from 42% of Africa, 21% from the Americas, and 21% from Europe.

Martínez called for immediate action to address the issue by governments, national authorities, regulators, and pharmaceutical companies manufacturing and selling the medicine. She added the need to “strengthen supply chains across the continent by enhancing infrastructure, improving logistics and implementing better surveillance-monitoring systems.”

Meanwhile, a WHO spokesperson said: “Recent incidents of contaminated oral liquid medicines have demonstrated that we need a concerted multi-stakeholder approach to prevent, detect, and respond to substandard and falsified products.”