Roger Bate
 
Most of the research on medicine quality in Africa has focused on antimicrobial medicines. We have looked into medicines to treat bacterial infections, malaria and tuberculosis in particular, however, a new PAPER across 10 francophone African nations looks at seven cardiovascular medicines and it makes for worrying reading.

One of the medicines (amlodipine) failed 28.5% of the time, others failed far less often, however, for four nations, including Benin, Niger, The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Congo-Brazzaville, over 20% of all medicines failed.

One wonders how many heart problems and deaths have been caused by these substandard medicines.