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Médecine et Santé Tropicales

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State of the fight against informal market of medicines in Togo: approaches and limitations Volume 28, issue 1, Janvier-Février-Mars 2018

Authors
1 Institut de santé globale, Faculté de médecine, Université de Genève, Suisse
2 Département de radiologie et informatique médicale, Faculté de médecine, Université de Genève, Suisse
3 Institut de droit de la santé, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Suisse
4 Swiss School of Public Health, Zurich, Suisse
5 Département d’Anthropologie, Université de Lomé, Togo
* Correspondance

The extent of medicines sales and consumption in the informal market in Togo raises many ethical and public health issues. In order to report on the situation of public action in the fight against this practice, we conducted a qualitative survey from 15 to 25 February 2016 in the commune of Lomé and in the Maritime Region among the actors of control system and resource people in the general population. This was supplemented by an analysis of Togo's pharmaceutical and health policy documents and a literature review on the illicit drug market issues relating to public health, political science, the social sciences applied to health. In spite of the existence of national and international tools, household poverty, cultural self-medication, ignorance of the population concerning the health risks of informal market medicines, weak political commitment, weakness regulation and enforcement, corruption, constitute obstacles to the success of actions to combat this practice.