E-DRUG: Report on medicine quality and antimicrobial resistance
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The Antimicrobial Resistance Review, commissioned by UK Prime Minister David Cameron and chaired by economist Jim O'Neill, on Friday (November 20th) issued a briefing paper on medicine quality and antimicrobial resistance.
Entitled 'Safe, Secure and Controlled: Managing the Supply Chain of Antimicrobials' it can be accessed at:
http://amr-review.org/sites/default/files/SafeSecureandControlledShortPaper.pdf <http://www.amr-review.org/>
The briefing was based on a longer analysis of the ways in which poor quality medicines promote the development and spread of antimicrobial resistance. That paper, Antimicrobial resistance: What does medicine quality have to do with it? found that sloppily made medicines churned out by low-cost producers for markets where oversight is low probably contribute far more to antimicrobial resistance world-wide than out-and-out fakes.
The paper proposes a number of actions including better surveillance of medicine quality along the lines developed for tracking bad malaria drugs, and a radical expansion of the WHO's medicine pre-qualification system. In addition, governments in the countries that make most low-cost drugs, notably India, should be incentivised to do more to secure the quality of the drugs they export.
The full paper is available on the AMR Review site
http://amr-review.org/sites/default/files/ElizabethPisaniMedicinesQualitypaper.pdf <http://www.amr-review.org/>\)
or from
http://www.ternyata.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/AMR_and_medicine_quality.docx
A short post containing links to these articles can be found on the King's College London Policy Institute blog:
Feedback and comments very welcome. pisani@ternyata.org <mailto:pisani@ternyata.org>
Elizabeth Pisani
Director
Ternyata Ltd
pisani@ternyata.org