The US Pharmacopeia (USP) has launched a free, public database of its drug testing to improve surveillance of poor-quality medicines.
The free, publically-available database is now live and to date includes 8,700 records of tested samples collected from countries in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia.
Patrick Lukulay, USP’s director of the Promoting the Quality of Medicines (PQM) programme, said the database “is a vital tool in helping to protect the public against the threat of substandard and counterfeit drugs”. Information in the database includes: geography; testing date by year; type of facility the sample was collected from; drug product information; test result; and substandard/counterfeit status.