2019: Fake antimalarial medicines without quinine discovered in three African countries

The Minilab network of DIFAEM operates 14 sites in Africa where local church partners use Minilabs from the Global Pharma Health Fund (GPHF) to test the quality of medicines in their health facilities in remote areas of rural Africa. Lacking testing capacities, these vulnerable communities are a soft target for criminals who infiltrate the local drug supply with non-performing fake medicines. During routine drug quality testing, three counterfeit batches of quinine were detected in two different countries using GPHF-Minilabs: Chad and the Central African Republic. The results of the investigations proved that these batches were completely lacking quinine. At the same time, in Uganda, another group detected a fourth batch of fake quinine by physical inspection of the labels only. The World Health Organization (WHO) issued an appropriate alert in October 2019. See the link as follows: http://bit.ly/2oQQJQN. Quinine is a drug used in the treatment of severe malaria infections. Fake and poor-quality quinine tablets are treating malaria patients incorrectly resulting in prolonged suffering or even death.

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