Poor regulation, dodgy pills spur plan for African drugs agency

Writing for Reuters, Ben Hirschler explores the plans for a central organisation to address the quality of medicines across Africa, playing a similar role to that of the European Medicines Agency.

“The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates one in 10 drugs sold in developing countries is fake or substandard, leading to tens of thousands of deaths, many of them of African children given ineffective treatments for pneumonia and malaria.”

Jayasree Iyer, Executive Director of the Access to Medicine Foundation highlights that transparency will be crucial in building such an organisation: “It’s very important that there is transparency over how money and information flows in an organisation like the African Medicines Agency. That is a significant hurdle that needs to be addressed.”