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WHO’s Role in Assuring the Quality Safety and Efficacy of Drugs: Introduction. EDM Technical Briefing 2004 . Lembit Rägo, MD, PhD, Coordinator Quality Assurance and Safety: Medicines Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy Health Technology and Pharmaceuticals Cluster
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WHO’s Role in Assuring the Quality Safety and Efficacy of Drugs: Introduction EDM Technical Briefing 2004 Lembit Rägo, MD, PhD, Coordinator Quality Assurance and Safety: Medicines Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy Health Technology and Pharmaceuticals Cluster World Health Organization E-mail: ragol@who.ch
Why medicines are special category of products? • Consumers, patients and health care workers have limited capacity to judge there • SAFETY • QUALITY • EFFICACY
Are all medicines safe, effective and meet quality criteria? • No, they are not • Some are safe, but not effective or necessarily meet the quality criteria • Some may be effective, meet quality criteria but are not safe • Some meet quality criteria but are not necessarily safe or have any efficacy
Quality - Safety • Some safety parameters are determined by quality • Some safety parameters are determined by the intrinsic properties of active pharmaceutical ingredient
What type of medicines we have? • Originator products • Multisource (generic) products • KEY – INTERCHANGEABILITY, more important THERAPEUTIC INTERCHNGEABILITY • ALL LITERATURE IS BASED ON ORGINATORS • No interchangeability – NEED FOR NEW SAFETY and EFFICACY DATA, NEW BOOKS HAVE TO BE WRITTEN
What type of regulations exist and how they differ? • For innovator products proof of QUALITY, SAFETY and EFFICACY is needed • For multisource products QUALITY, safety and efficacy data is referred to the originator providing only evidence about interchangeability (bioequivalence, clinical testing, in limited cases dissolution data)
Regulations: Global vs National • National regulations still differ a lot • What is ICH and what it is not? • Regional harmonization initiatives • Do global norms exist for generics?
Is quality of medicines a problem? • Yes, a HUGE problem • If we would have the same compliance with norms and quality in aircraft industry Globally • approximately 25% planes would not take off the grounds • 10% would crash and kill the people (treatment failure = killing in some cases; toxicity etc. )
Norms and standards, nomenclatures International Pharmacopoeia International Nonproprietary Names (INN) ATC/DDD classification … Regulatory guidelines Good Manufacturing Practice; Good Clinical Practice etc. Comprehensive set of guidelines for registering generic drugs … Information exchange WHO Drug Information (quarterly) WHO pharmaceutical Newsletter WHO Rapid Alerts International Conference of Drug Regulatory Authorities (ICDRA) – usually more than 100 countries represented …. Capacity building and training GMP training courses Courses on how to assess generic drugs Courses on pharmacovigilance …. What WHO is doing?
Conclusions • A lot of good work ongoing but …. • Limited capacity to advertise, promote, inform etc. • Limited resources to build capacity in countries • Please, for more information: • http://www.who.int/medicines