Fight the Fakes partner the US Pharmacopeial Convention’s (USP) Center for Pharmaceutical Advancement and Training (CePAT) in Accra, Ghana today opens a new pharmaceutical microbiology laboratory to test the contents of medicines in Africa. The state-of-the-art laboratory will train pharmaceutical and regulatory professionals to identify medicines contaminated with microorganisms, such as bacteria. Such testing has historically been a challenge in low-resource settings in Africa.
Millions of patients in Africa who rely on medicines to get well can benefit from having a skilled workforce and an expanded center to test the quality of medicines. As Dr. Patrick Lukulay, USP’s Vice President of Global Health Impact Programs in Africa, discusses in an Op-Ed in Uganda’s New Vision, with as much as a one-third of the drug supply on the continent estimated to be substandard or fake, patients’ chances of getting a product that doesn’t meet quality standards—and are unsafe and likely ineffective—are quite high.
Learn more about the new USP and CePAT lab here.
