A US and Pan-African research group published their findings in The Lancet Global Health, which revealed that nearly 1 in 5 chemotherapy drugs collected from hospitals and private pharmacies in four African countries failed quality tests.
Samples of 7 key anticancer drugs including methotrexate, cisplatin, and doxorubicin, were collected between April 2023 and February 2024, from Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and Cameroon.
Using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), researchers found that 48 samples (19%) did not contain the correct amount of active pharmaceutical ingredient. Some had as little as 28%, while others exceeded 120% of the stated dosage.
Alarmingly, these substandard drugs were found in 12 public hospitals and 25 privately owned pharmacies.
While visual inspection is the main method regulators currently use to assess drug quality, the study found that only 9% of defective products were visually detectable.
The research also uncovered that 24% of the drugs tested had already expired by the time they were analyzed, some by nearly a year.
These findings expose serious gaps in pharmaceutical regulation and post-market surveillance, and raise urgent questions about the safety of cancer treatment across Sub-Saharan Africa.