Substandard and Falsified Medicines in Myanmar.

substandard and falsified medicines (SFMs) are a threat to public health. The availability of SFMs in Myanmar was reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1999, but there have been few systematic surveys on falsified medicines in Myanmar since then. The aim of this study is to examine the extent of SFMs for sale in Myanmar.

Survey to Identify Substandard and Falsified Tablets in Several Asian Countries with Pharmacopeial Quality Control Tests and Principal Component Analysis of Handheld Raman Spectroscopy.

The World Health Organization has warned that substandard and falsified medical products (SFs) can harm patients and fail to treat the diseases for which they were intended, and they affect every region of the world, leading to loss of confidence in medicines, health-care providers, and health systems. Therefore, development of analytical procedures to detect SFs is extremely important. In this study, we investigated the quality of pharmaceutical tablets containing the antihypertensive candesartan cilexetil, collected in China, Indonesia, Japan, and Myanmar, using the Japanese pharmacopeial analytical procedures for quality control, together with principal component analysis (PCA) of Raman spectrum obtained with handheld Raman spectrometer.