When the drugs don’t work
Medicine Quality and Public Health addressed an important global topic – substandard and falsified medicines.
This is an increasing problem for global health mainly affecting developing nations but also developed countries such as the UK and its National Health Service.
Photo:: Oxford University Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health
There are a number of causes of poor quality medicines, but they largely fall into two broad categories.
Medicines can be substandard through errors in manufacturer or bad storage or transportation. Drugs can also be falsified, often made from wrong or inactive ingredients, sold in copies of packaging of authorised companies, with criminal intent to deceive health workers and patients.
Photo:: Oxford University Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health
The five-day conference, held in the opulent surroundings of Keble College, Oxford brought together stakeholders from across the field, including experts from the worlds of pharmacology, law enforcement, anthropology, government, sociology, policy making and computer engineering, and culminated in the agreement of the Oxford Statement (the full text of which will be released in 2019).
This was a challenging subject for Drawnalism to cover, in view of the wide range of topics and disciplines being discussed, but it’s always nice to hear that our output is appreciated!
