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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9278

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Amin AA, Snow RW.
Brands, costs and registration status of antimalarial drugs in the Kenyan retail sector.
Malar J 2005 Jul 26; 4:(1):36
http://www.malariajournal.com/content/4/1/36


Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Although an important source of treatment for fevers, little is known about the structure of the retail sector in Africa with regard to antimalarial drugs. This study aimed to assess the range, costs, sources and registration of antimalarial drugs in the Kenyan retail sector.

METHODS: In 2002, antimalarial drug registration and trade prices were established by triangulating national registration lists, government gazettes and trade price indices. Data on registration status and trade prices were compared with similar data generated through a retail audit undertaken among 880 randomly sampled retailers in four districts of Kenya.

RESULTS: Two hundred and eighteen antimalarial drugs were in circulation in Kenya in 2002. These included 65 “sulfur”-pyrimethamine (sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and sulfalene-pyrimethamine (SP), the first-line recommended drug in 2002) and 33 amodiaquine (AQ, the second-line recommended drug) preparations. Only half of SP and AQ products were registered with the Pharmacy and Poisons Board. Of SP and AQ brands at district level, 40% and 44% were officially within legal registration requirements. 29% of retailers at district level stocked SP and 95% stocked AQ. The retail price of adult doses of SP and AQ were on average 0.38 and 0.76 US dollars, 100% and 347% higher than trade prices from manufacturers and importers. Artemether-lumefantrine, the newly announced first-line recommended antimalarial drug in 2004, was found in less than 1% of all retail outlets at a median cost of 7.6 US dollars.

CONCLUSION: There is a need to ensure that all antimalarial drugs are registered with the Pharmacy and Poisons Board to facilitate a more stringent post-marketing surveillance system to ensure drugs are safe and of good quality post-registration.

Keywords:
Publication Types: Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH Terms: Antimalarials/classification* Antimalarials/economics* Antimalarials/supply & distribution Costs and Cost Analysis Drug Costs Drug and Narcotic Control Humans Kenya Pharmaceutical Preparations/classification* Pharmaceutical Preparations/economics* Pharmaceutical Preparations/supply & distribution Pharmacies Prescription Fees Product Surveillance, Postmarketing Registries/standards Substances: Antimalarials Pharmaceutical Preparations


Notes:

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909