Quality testing of commonly purchased drugs in Freetown

Working paper 1 Sep 2026 State Effectiveness and Sustainable Growth

The following mystery-shopping study in Freetown, Sierra Leone, assessed the quality of 80 samples of four commonly purchased medicines using pharmacopoeial testing. While no falsified drugs or dangerous contaminants were found, one in four samples was substandard, primarily because they released too little of the active ingredient. Quality failures were concentrated among painkillers and appeared to cluster by specific brands, with little evidence that vendor restocking practices explained the variation. The findings suggest that targeted enforcement at the manufacturer level may be more effective than restricting vendors, which could unintentionally reduce access to medicines for low-income consumers.