You might be on pain killers or antibiotics now, and aren’t aware of the legitimacy of the drugs you are using. Of course, you shouldn’t be asking these questions but there is an unfortunate market for counterfeit medicine in the world.
According to the World Health Organization, 10 -30% of counterfeit drugs are sold in developing countries, and the counterfeit market grosses to $200 billion annually. In thus, a need for organizations to continuously assess the quality of counterfeit medicines arises.
Botswana’s government has taken the need to improve their health care in their nation. The Global Pharma Health Fund, an altruistic intiative funded by SciTech company Merk has donated a mobile compact laboratory to the country’s ministry of health to help detect counterfeit medicines.
The P45 000.00 lab is aimed to find inferior and counterfeit medicines reliably and rapidly, according to a press statement by the Global Pharma Health Fund. Minister of Health Makgato-Malesu noted that counterfeit medicines pose a serious threat to public health in the global sphere and in the local atmosphere too. With the new mobile lab, medicines can be assessed of quality in both urban and rural areas.
The minilab is made up of two portable and tropic resistant suitcases that can detect inferior or ineffective drugs. Through offering a quick simple and low cost method to check medicines for any abnormalities, it can identify 75 active pharmaceutical ingredients – particularly those used in infectious diseases. These include medicines that are common antibiotics, anti-malarial medicines, tubercolostatics and other medicines.
The lab was donated November 20th and is still in the capital city of the country, Gaborone.
