Drug quality analysis through high performance liquid chromatography of isometamidium chloride hydrochloride and diminazene diaceturate purchased from official and unofficial sources in Northern Togo

• Fourty percent of trypanocides on the Togolese market are of sub-standard quality.
• Legal measures should be taken to impede the import of low quality drugs.
• The reference laboratory of the OIE, LACOMEV in Dakar performs drug quality testing

Trypanocidal drugs remain the most accessible and thus commonly used means of controlling tsetse transmitted animal African trypanosomosis. In Togo, trypanocides are sold on official as well as unofficial markets, but the quality of these trypanocides is undocumented so a drug quality assessment study was conducted from May 2013 to June 2014. Trypanocides supplied by European, Indian and Chinese pharmaceutical companies and sold on official and unofficial markets in Togo were purchased. In total fifty-two trypanocides were obtained, 24 of these samples from official markets and 28 from unofficial markets made up of a total of 36 diminazene diaceturate and 16 isometamidium chloride hydrochloride samples. The samples were analysed in the reference laboratory of the OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health), Laboratory for the Control of Veterinary Medicines (LACOMEV) in Dakar which uses galenic testing and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) testing as standard reference analysis methods. The results revealed a high proportion of trypanocides of sub-standard quality on the Togolese market: 40% were non-compliant to these quality reference standards. All of the HPLC non-compliant samples contained lower amounts of active ingredient compared to the concentration specified on the packaging. Non-compliance was higher in samples from the unofficial (53.57%) than from the official markets (25%; p = 0.04).The main drug manufacturers, mostly of French origin in the study area, supply quality drugs through the official legal distribution circuit. Products of other origins mostly found on illegal markets present a significantly lower quality.