Availability and Usage of Drugs at Household Level i Tanzania: Case Study in Kinondoni District, Dar es Salaam

A survey was conducted in 400 households in Kinondoni District, Tanzania, to determine the availability, source, storage condition, and usage of medicinal drugs. Majority of the households (73.3 %) stored drugs at home. Seven hundred and sixty one (761) different types of drug preparations were encountered. Only 64.7 % of these drugs were in use at the time of study. About 45 % of the antibacterials found in the households were being kept for future use in self-medication. Large proportions of these drugs were obtained from authorised private health facilities. Only a minority (10 %) were obtained from unauthorised sources. Sixty seven percent of all the drugs kept at the households were not stored properly. Majority of the respondents (83 %) admitted practising self-medication. Sharing of drugs within and across households was also practised. Key Words: Household, storage condition, drug use status, self-medication. East and Central African Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences Vol.5(3) 2002: 49-5

Cross-sectional study of availability and pharmaceutical quality of antibiotics requested with or without prescription (Over The Counter) in Surabaya, Indonesia

Contains fulltext : 87881.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Medicines informal market in Congo, Burundi and Angola: counterfeit and sub-standard antimalarials

BACKGROUND: The presence of counterfeits and sub-standards in African medicines market is a dramatic problem that causes many deaths each year. The increase of the phenomenon of pharmaceutical counterfeiting is due to the rise of the illegal market and to the impossibility to purchase branded high cost medicines. METHODS: In this paper the results of a quality control on antimalarial tablet samples purchased in the informal market in Congo, Burundi and Angola are reported. The quality control consisted in the assay of active substance by means of validated liquid chromatographic methods, uniformity of mass determination, disintegration and dissolution tests. Moreover, a general evaluation on label and packaging characteristics was performed. RESULTS: The results obtained on thirty antimalarial tablet samples containing chloroquine, quinine, mefloquine, sulphadoxine and pyrimethamine showed the presence of different kinds of problems: a general problem concerning the packaging (loose tablets, packaging without Producer name, Producer Country and sometimes without expiry date); low content of active substance (in one sample); different, non-declared, active substance (in one sample); sub-standard technological properties and very low dissolution profiles (in about 50% of samples). This last property could affect the bioavailability and bioequivalence in comparison with branded products and could be related to the use of different excipients in formulation or bad storage conditions. CONCLUSION: This paper evidences that the most common quality problem in the analysed samples appears to be the low dissolution profile. Here it is remarked that the presence of the right active substance in the right quantity is not a sufficient condition for a good quality drug. Dissolution test is not less important in a quality control and often evidences in vitro possible differences in therapeutic efficacy among drugs with the same active content. Dissolution profile can be dramatically affected by the choice of excipients in the oral solid formulation and, in many cases, is out of specifications due to the absence of formulation studies by producers of developing countries