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Why cancer drug quality is a worry in Kenya
04th November, 2025 01:46 PM
While access to cancer treatment has slightly improved over the years in Kenya, questions surrounding counterfeit, substandard, or poorly regulated cancer medication are putting thousands of lives at risk.
As patients cling to hope in their fight against cancer, the integrity of the very drugs meant to save them remains uncertain, which in turn raises alarm.
In research by Marya Lieberman, Nancy Dee, who is a professor from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame, conducted in Kenya, unearthed the challenges surrounding cancer treatment and drugs in four African countries, including Kenya.
In her findings, Nancy, who is a cancer researcher, was able to establish the growth in cancer care in Kenya, which was previously only available to a few thousand patients per year in a few hospitals.
In her findings, the number of people receiving cancer treatment has risen dramatically in the last decade in many African countries. For example, 10 years ago in Ethiopia and Kenya, cancer care was available to only a few thousand patients per year in a few hospitals.
“Today, over 75,000 people receive cancer treatment each year in each of these countries; however, medicine regulatory agencies in many countries don’t have the capacity to measure the quality of anticancer drugs,” Nancy indicated in her report.
Cancer drug in Kenya
She argues that the quality of cancer drugs in Kenya is highly affected by the high cost of the drugs in the region.
“Firstly, the high cost of the drugs is an incentive to opt for unverified ones. And secondly, they are highly toxic,” she added.
On the other hand, the combination of high demand with low capacity for regulatory oversight in a market renders it vulnerable to substandard and falsified medical products.
In addition, Nancy was able to establish that there have been disturbing reports of substandard or falsified products causing harm to patients in a number of countries, including Brazil, the US, and now Kenya.
She further reveals that there have been no systematic studies of anticancer drug quality across low- and middle-income countries; hence, as a result, little is known about the quality of the drugs being used to treat cancer in Kenya and Africa at large.
Report on fake drugs
Nancy further reveals how, during the research in the four countries in Africa including Kenya, they were able to establish counterfeit drugs.
“Members of our research team collected 251 anticancer products in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi in 2023 and 2024. Products were collected both covertly and overtly from 12 hospitals and 25 private or community pharmacies, covering both public and private healthcare systems in each country,” read her findings.
“We assessed the assay value – the quantity of the active pharmaceutical ingredient in each dose – of the samples we had collected,” read her findings in part.
She reveals that they were able to find substandard or falsified anticancer medicines in all four countries, including Kenya.
“We found substandard or falsified anticancer medicines in all four countries. We discovered that 32 (17%) of 191 unique lots of seven anticancer products did not contain the correct amount of active pharmaceutical ingredient,” she added.
“Substandard or falsified products were present in major cancer hospitals and in the private market in all four countries,” she revealed
