©
andresr, Getty Images
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10.5% of medicines worldwide in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or are falsified (i.e. fake). These medicines and vaccines fail to prevent and treat the diseases for which they are intended and risk additional adverse health consequences if the ingredients used in the falsified products are harmful, resulting in a threat to global health.
The Vaccine Identify Evaluation (VIE) Collaboration is developing novel tests for detecting falsified vaccines in supply chains.
Now, for the first time, this international consortium has demonstrated that widely available and routine hospital analysers provide a low-cost means to accurately differentiate genuine liquid medical products from falsified surrogate samples.
This technique is not intended to replace reference assays, but to screen samples that need further investigation in specialised laboratories.
The consortium includes representatives from the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry, Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, Pandemic Sciences Institute and Department of Chemistry; the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; STFC, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI); the University of East London; the World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva; the Serum Institute of India; and Agilent Technologies.
Read the full story on the University of Oxford website.