A group of 10 pharmaceutical companies and six voluntary organisations have endorsed new World Health Organisation guidelines for drug donation.
The guidelines are for use by organisations wishing to donate drugs to countries that have suffered a natural disaster, or that are war zones. They have been drawn up in an attempt to reduce the occurrence of inappropriate drug donation. In some recent cases, up to 60 per cent of drug donations were inappropriate, as the drugs had expired, were inadequately labelled or were unknown to local health providers. The result has been the delivery of hundreds of tons of "unusable" drugs, which then constitute an environmental hazard to the recipient country, says WHO. By signing the guidelines, the organisations are pledging to donate only those drugs that have been requested by recipient countries, to ensure that they are properly labelled and not to donate drugs that are close to or past their expiry date.
WHO will take responsibility for tracking the quality of donations and will provide feedback to organisations that do not comply with the guidelines. "Publicly underwriting and actively adhering to the guidelines is the best way for donors to ensure that the drugs they give truly benefit the recipient," said Dr Jonathan Quick (director of WHO's essential drug programme). The guidelines may be found on www.who.int/dap/edmguidelines.html.