Quality Assessment of Some Essential Children's Medicines Sold in Licensed Outlets in Ashanti Region, Ghana.

Quality Assessment of Some Essential Children's Medicines Sold in Licensed Outlets in Ashanti Region, Ghana. J Trop Med. 2018;2018:1494957 Authors: Frimpong G, Ofori-Kwakye K, Kuntworbe N, Buabeng KO, Osei YA, Boakye-Gyasi ME, Adi-Dako O Abstract The quality of 68 samples of 15 different essential children's medicines sold in licensed medicine outlets in the Ashanti Region, Ghana, was evaluated. Thirty-two (47.1%) of the medicines were imported, mainly from India (65.6%) and the United Kingdom (28.1%), while 36 (52.9%) were locally manufactured. The quality of the medicines was assessed using content of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), pH, and microbial limit tests, and the results were compared with pharmacopoeial standards. Twenty-six (38.2%) of the samples studied passed the official content of API test while 42 (61.8%) failed. Forty-nine (72.1%) of the samples were compliant with official specifications for pH while 19 (27.9%) were noncompliant. Sixty-six (97.1%) samples passed the microbial load and content test while 2 (2.9%) failed. Eighteen (26.5%) samples passed all the three quality evaluation tests, while one (1.5%) sample (CFX1) failed all the tests. All the amoxicillin suspensions tested passed the three evaluation tests. All the ciprofloxacin, cotrimoxazole, flucloxacillin, artemether-lumefantrine, multivitamin, and folic acid samples failed the content of API test and are substandard. The overall API failure rat...
Source: Journal of Tropical Medicine - Category: Tropical Medicine Tags: J Trop Med Source Type: research