Poor quality medical products jeopardise national, regional and global attempts to improve access to effective health care because they lead to avoidable morbidity and mortality, waste human and financial resources, and contribute to drug resistance. WHO estimates that globally 1 in 10 medical products is substandard/falsified, but the reality is that their detailed epidemiology remains unclear because of the difficulties of detecting them in supply chains and communities.
The Medicine Quality Research Group (LOMWRU, Lao PDR) of IDDO and MORU conducted an independent evaluation and comparison of portable devices to provide evidence to facilitate decisions about whether these new technologies are appropriate for screening of medicines in their countries and they should be deployed.
This work has been described in this series of five papers, published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases:
- Multiphase evaluation of portable medicines quality screening device
- Laboratory evaluation of twelve portable devices for medicine quality screening
- A comparative field evaluation of six medicine quality screening devices in Laos
- Implementation of field detection devices for antimalarial quality screening in Lao PDR—A cost-effectiveness analysis
- Evaluation of portable devices for medicine quality screening: Lessons learnt, recommendations for implementation, and future priorities