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Home > News > Medicines that lie / Les médicaments mensongers - A public health crisis

Published April 03, 2018 / Public health

Medicines that lie / Les médicaments mensongers - A public health crisis

20180403-MedicinesThatLie

The Brazzaville Foundation, in partnership with the Harvard Global Health Institute and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), successfully organised a conference on the subject of the spread of counterfeit medicines around the world, which took place on March 28 at the Wellcome Trust in London.

Caption: Lynda Scammell (MHRA - UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency); Oscar Alrcón Jiménez (Council of Europe - MEDICRIME); Ashish jha (Harvard); Mick Deats (WHO), Irene Papanicolas (LSE).

35 international experts and practitioners present

Among the personalities who took part in these exchanges were academics and researchers from Harvard, Oxford and the LSHTM, representatives of the World Health Organization, the Council of Europe, the British and French Ministries of Health, as well as NGOs such as the Institut de Recherche Anti-Contrefaçon de Médicaments and the Fondation Chirac. Specialists from Africa and the Middle East were also present at the conference.

A call to action

By shedding light on this scourge, the conference highlighted the importance of acting now to combat these phenomena which, although widespread across the globe, have a particular impact on poor countries, which are suffering serious public health crises.

Sub-Saharan Africa, where 30-60% of medicines in circulation are fake or substandard, is a prime example.

Combating this peril must become a major international challenge

One of the aims of this conference was also to take advantage of the next World Health Assembly in May 2018, as well as the G20, African Union, Commonwealth and United Nations assemblies, to ensure that the Universal Health Coverage promised by the Programme Sustainable Development 2030 not only offers access to medicines, but truly to effective medicines.

 

The conference produced a number of recommendations, including:

 

The agreement on the terms of reference for the 2017 World Health Assembly is a considerable step forward. However, disagreements over definitions and terminologies can no longer justify inaction.

 

Because the problems resulting from trafficking of fake and substandard medicines are complex, more research and data are needed to more effectively define the scale and nature of this scourge.

 

Political solutions must better reflect the complexity of this scourge: better regulations and stronger legal frameworks, stricter law enforcement and tougher penalties. The Ministries of the Interior and Justice must also be involved, in cooperation with the Ministry of Health.

 

The Council of Europe's MEDICRIME Convention provides a model for the introduction of a criminal legal framework. However, as criminal activity is transnational, this legal framework needs to be adopted worldwide to be fully effective. To date, only 12 countries have ratified the convention. 

 

The extent of criminal involvement, particularly by transnational trafficking networks, is an important subject that remains under-researched.

 

Innovative technologies, particularly in the rapid detection of fake or substandard medicines, are emerging and providing new solutions. We need to ensure that these new approaches are rapidly replicated and deployed worldwide.

 

An effective global surveillance system is essential to capture and understand all the dimensions of the problem. The new WHO system is a positive sign, but it suffers considerably from a lack of reporting. New approaches need to be devised to obtain better data and generate reports more systematically.

 

The international community's concern over growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is yet another reason to place greater emphasis on the fight against trafficking falsified medicines.

 

To date, research has tended to focus mainly on the supply side; it is now urgent to study the demand side. This means focusing not only on consumer needs, but also on improving access to quality medicines.