World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Apart from coordinating international efforts to control outbreaks of infectious disease, such as SARS, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza, and HIV/AIDS, the WHO also sponsors programs to prevent and treat such diseases. The WHO supports the development and distribution of safe and effective vaccines, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and drugs, such as through the Expanded Program on Immunization.
In close cooperation with national regulatory agencies and partner organizations, the Prequalification Programme aims to make quality priority medicines available for the benefit of those in need.
Strategy
- Apply unified standards of acceptable quality, safety and efficacy.
- Comprehensively evaluate the quality, safety and efficacy of medicinal products, based on information submitted by the manufacturers, and inspection of the corresponding manufacturing and clinical sites.
- Prequalify quality control laboratories of pharmaceuticals.
- Build the capacity of staff from national regulatory authorities, quality control laboratories, and from manufacturers or other private companies, to ensure medicines quality.
Key output
The list of prequalified medicinal products used for HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and for reproductive health produced by the Programme is used principally by United Nations agencies including UNAIDS and UNICEF to guide their procurement decisions. But, the list has become a vital tool for any agency or organization involved in bulk purchasing of medicines, be this at country level, or at international level, as demonstrated by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
PROXY Laboratories is one of only four Western Europe based contract laboratories prequalified by the WHO and has contributed to large anti-TB programs of the WHO.