Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe

Substandard and falsified (SF) medical products reduce the effectiveness of treatments, cause adverse drug reactions, economic harm and engender antimicrobial drug resistance – threatening the lives of millions. Global investment to improve the prevention and treatment of disease is wasted if the quality of the medical products actually used by patients is poor.

Current SF surveillance in most of the world is extremely limited and incidents relating to poor quality medicines are often not published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The new Medicine Quality Monitoring (MQM) Globe helps fill evidence gaps with customised summaries of national and international newspaper reports on medical products’ quality viewable on-screen in French, Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese and English, and reports are available to download. The Globe also includes a new system for displaying regulatory and alerts webpages. These systems give early warning of new SF incidents, reveal the extent of the problem, how the media perceive and report cases, and may also shed light on how incidents can affect subsequent behaviours and perceptions. The MQM Globe supports national and international organisations to understand and raise awareness of the issue of substandard and falsified medicines.

The Medicine Quality Research Group is now publishing regular reports about SF-related COVID-19 medical products including COVID-19 vaccines. 

The MQM Globe collates two types of information: reports from the lay press and links to regulatory alerts.

• Lay press articles: Alerts and reports of SF medical products referenced in Google News, which consists mainly of online newspapers and platforms. In addition alerts and reports released by NGOs, national and international organisations which are not necessarily linked to a governance body are also included.
• Regulatory & alert webpages: The Globe shows links to webpages of SF medical product alerts and reports emanating from national regulatory authorities or national or international organisations with a mandate to report on the subject such as the WHO alerts.

Lay press articles on the MQM Globe

• Includes data describing a wide range of events related to the quality of medical products retrieved from the lay literature including online newspapers and websites with viewable on-screen results in French, English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Mandarin.
• Describes seizures, recalls, case-reports of individuals suffering potential side effects, prosecutions/trials of individuals involved in medicine quality incidents, techniques used to detect/prevent poor quality medicines over time and location.
• Provides an online service with continually updated customised media reports relevant to global medicine quality.
• Filters articles according to language, the type of report, by specific keywords and time periods.
• Provides customised searches and allows download of customised reports.
• It has been updated to track press reports of SF medical products related to COVID-19, including key items such as masks, diagnostic tests, medicines and vaccines. Medicines and vaccines being trialled are listed on websites such as: World Health Organisation, EU Clinical Trials Register, USA Clinical Trials, COVID-19 Clinical Trials Interactive tool, Covid e-vidence Database and Cochrane COVID-19 Study Register.

There are important caveats when interpreting these data, view here. Please note in particular our takedown policy and that the information in the Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe usually will not have scientific confirmation. Therefore, please interpret the information in the Globe with the greatest caution.

Regulatory & alert webpages through the MQM Globe

• Directs the user to the relevant webpage of the regulatory authorities of different countries.  

Data access and use

The Globe is freely accessible and pdf reports of up to 100 articles data per report are freely downloadable through the download button. If you use the reports in your work we would be grateful if the ‘Medicine Quality Research Group and the Infectious Disease Data Observatory Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe’ could be acknowledged. If you would like to download more than 100 articles, please contact medicinequality@iddo.org with a brief proposal of what the data will be used for.

Additional information 

• User guide 
• Lay press articles  
  • Methodology
  • Data categories
  • Search terms
• Regulatory & alert webpages  
• Disclaimer and caveats 
• Acknowledgements  

For more information about contributing medicine quality data to IDDO or helping us to improve the MQM Globe, please email medicinequality@iddo.org

Find out more about IDDO’s Medicine Quality work.