Making medicines and health technologies safe and accessible The
Bulletin interview with Vladimir Lepakhin. Q: What challenges do
we face with health technologies? A: Health technologies cover a
diverse area: blood transfusion and safety, medical equip¬ment,
diagnostics, surgery, anaesthesia, organ transplantation and so
on. WHO has much experience in blood safety, but started working
on transplantation recently. Here we advise governments on the
technical aspects as well as the ethical concerns relating to
organ donation, transplantation and trafficking. Q: What is WHO
doing to stop the sale of counterfeit medicines? A: The quality
of products on the market in each country is the responsibility
of national drug regulatory bodies. We assist and support
countries to strengthen their pharmaceutical legislation, drug
standards and requirements, national drug regulatory performance
at all stages: from production, distribution and sales to their
use. Quality assurance should be built into the entire process.
We ha