Cancer patients in Malawi and three other African countries could be worsening their conditions due to quality flaws in available anti-cancer drugs, findings of a study published in the Lancet Global Health journal show.
The research examined cancer medications from 12 hospitals and 25 private or community pharmacies in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Cameroon.
It assessed factors such as appearance, packaging, labelling and assay value—the quantity of active pharmaceutical ingredients in each drug.
problem of enforcement. | Nation
“In this study, 32 [17 percent] of 191 unique lots of seven anti-cancer products collected in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa in 2023-24 did not contain the correct amount of active pharmaceutical ingredients,” reads in part the findings.
According to the report published last week, poor regulatory capacity, bad manufacturing practices, falsification and improper shipping or storage could have resulted in quality defects.
To address the issue, the researchers suggested that hospitals should have chemical screening technologies for detecting bad-quality cancer medicines and should create policies for how to respond to products that fail screening tests.
Further, the study recommended funding of pharmacy regulatory bodies in the four countries to train technicians and buy equipment for screening of anti-cancer drugs.
One of the researchers, Marya Lieberman, was quoted on the University of Notre Dame website as having said that visual inspection, which is the main method for detecting bad quality cancer drugs in sub-Saharan Africa today, only found one in 10 of the bad products.
The professor of chemistry at Notre Dame University also said incorrect amounts of ingredients in drugs can result in the cancer surviving and spreading to other locations.
Two Malawian researchers—Ibrahim Chikowe from Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (Kuhes) and Hanna Kumwenda from the University of North Carolina Project Malawi—were among 14 experts from Africa and the United States involved in the study.
Commenting on the findings in an interview yesterday, Kuhes professor of public health Adamson Muula said Kuhes researchers faced a backlash last year after releasing a study revealing that 14 percent of common medicines in Malawi are substandard and falsified.
He said people do not want to know that some of the medicines being distributed in the country are falsified and may be harmful.
“The issue of substandard drugs is a problem of enforcement of regulations, corruption and a society that allows mediocrity,” said Muula.
The Pharmacy and Medicines Regulatory Authority (PMRA) was yet to respond to our questionnaire.
However, last August PMRA director general Mphatso Kawaye said routine quality surveillance activities over the past four years showed that Malawi has a four percent prevalence rate of substandard and falsified medicines, implying that it was better than most African countries.
Kawaye made the remarks after the August 4 2024 edition of The Guardian newspaper of the United Kingdom quoted a study by researchers at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia as having suggested that Malawi had the highest prevalence rate of substandard and falsified medicines at 88 percent.
