A new publicly available database that provides information on the quality of medicines that have been tested for their authenticity is now available to anyone with Internet access (http://tinyurl.com/3exvzcs). The Medicines Quality Database is intended to assist health authorities, manufacturers, and regulators in protecting the public from substandard and counterfeit drugs.
To date, more than 8700 records of tested samples collected from Ghana, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Guyana, Columbia, and Peru have been entered into the database. Data include where and when the medical sample was found, the facility from which the sample was collected, information about the medicine, whether the sample was found to be substandard or counterfeit, and other information.