Abstract

With the advent of Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACTs) as the recommended treatment protocol for malaria by WHO, the menace of substandard and counterfeit anti-malaria drugs have been on the rise. Artesunate-amodiaquine, like other ACTs, has been widely implicated in this menace due to the market value and affordability. 13 representative brands of Artesunate/Amodiaquine were procured from different outlets in urban and peri-urban parts of Lagos, Nigeria. Quantitative and qualitative analysis were carried out on the different brands using HPLC. The results show all brands to contain the test APIs but in proportions varied about the USP specified limits. 30.8% of the test brands had artesunate within the USP specification. 30.8% of amodiaquine also had met the quality specification of USP. But only 15.4% of the sample had both amodiaquine and artesunate within the USP specification. 53.8% failed the active content test for both amodiaquine and artesunate.

Key words: Artemisinin combination therapy (ACTs), WHO, malaria, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).