The World Health Organization today issued two substantive reports on the problem of substandard and falsified medicines around the world, finding among other things that an estimated one in 10 medical products in low and middle income countries is either substandard or falsified.

WHO launched its Global Surveillance and Monitoring System for substandard and falsified medicines, vaccines and in-vitro diagnostic tests in July 2013. This first report is based on data collected during the first 4 years of operation up to 30 June 2017.

The second report is a study on the public health and socioeconomic impact of substandard or falsified medical products conducted by WHO and the Member State Mechanism

The reports are available on the WHO website here.

“Since 2013, WHO has received 1500 reports of cases of substandard or falsified products,” the UN agency said in a release. “Of these, antimalarials and antibiotics are the most commonly reported. Most of the reports (42%) come from sub-Saharan Africa, 21% from the Americas and 21% from the European region.”

“This is likely just a small fraction of the total problem and many cases may be going unreported,” it said. “For example, only 8% of reports of substandard or falsified products to WHO came from the WHO Western Pacific region, 6% from the Eastern Mediterranean and just 2% from the South-East Asia region.”

“In conjunction with the first report from the Global Surveillance and Monitoring System published today, WHO is publishing research that estimates a 10.5% failure rate in all medical products used in low- and middle-income countries,” it said.

“[T]hese two reports represent the most comprehensive compilation to date of data related to substandard and falsified medical products and are a first step towards better understanding their public health and socioeconomic impact,” WHO said.

Intellectual Property Watch will update this story with in-depth details on the reports and the press briefing with WHO officials shortly.