The World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board has welcomed the United States Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) into official relations, recognizing USP as a trusted expert, advisor, and collaborator to ensure quality medicines around the world.
USP joins the ranks of only 200 selective non-governmental organizations, international business associations and philanthropic foundations, which have official relationships with the WHO, advising and promoting WHO policies and strategies to advance public health globally. This new status allows USP to participate in and contribute expertise on global health priorities during official WHO briefings, conferences and sessions, sharing its position and making formal statements to inform critical and timely global health policies.
“We are honored to be recognized as an official partner of the World Health Organization,” said Ronald T. Piervincenzi, CEO of USP. “We look forward to continuing to work with the WHO to ensure that medicines are of necessary quality to be safe and reliable for people around the world. These efforts are not only critical to protecting individuals from harm and illness, but also to safeguarding our collective global health advances from emerging threats, such as antimicrobial resistance.”
USP has a longstanding history of collaboration with the WHO. Working to advance Sustainable Development Goal 3 – ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all – USP works to ensure the quality, safety, and benefit of medicines and foods around the world. Specifically, USP partners with WHO to:
- Improve global access and use of safe and effective quality medicines by setting public standards and best practices for medicines and health technologies;
- Strengthen regional and in-country pharmaceutical regulatory capacity by supporting and training national labs and regulatory agencies;
- Enhance global pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity by helping in-country manufacturers achieve WHO prequalification;
- Reduce the global burden of poor-quality medicines by monitoring and sharing available data on medicine quality around the world.
A recent WHO report revealed that poor-quality medicines disproportionally affect low- and middle-income countries, where one in ten medical products are either substandard or falsified. Additionally, poor-quality medicines contribute to the growing and costly threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which could cause 10 million deaths by 2050 and cost the world up to $100 trillion if left unchecked. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus has identified AMR as a top global priority.
About USP
USP is an independent non-profit organization that collaborates with the world’s top health and science experts to develop high-quality standards that set the bar for manufacturing and distributing safe and effective medicines, supplements and food around the globe. Two billion people world-wide have access to quality medicines, dietary supplements and food as a result of USP’s standards, advocacy and education.
Through its global public health programs like Promoting the Quality of Medicines, funded by the US Agency for International Development and implemented by USP, and the USP-APEC Center of Excellence in Securing Medicines Quality in the Supply Chain, the organization strengthens medicines quality assurance systems, increases the supply of quality-assured medicines, and develops capacity to detect and remove poor-quality medicines from the market. By sharing scientific expertise and providing technical support and leadership, USP helps local regulators improve and sustain local health systems, and enables manufacturers to supply quality-assured essential medicines for years to come. Through these efforts, USP is able to help prevent and treat diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases, and improve maternal, newborn and child health.