Mapping a Way to Displaced Persons’ Access to Quality Medicines

Reliable, adequate supply of essential items, including quality-assured medicines, is hard to maintain in refugee camps in low-and middleincome countries.Disruption of medicine supply chains delays treatment for displaced persons and drives procurement of poor-quality products, often from unauthorized or unlicensed sellers.This article explains how current strategies and policies disrupt reliable flow of safe medicines to refugee camps and calls on stakeholders to rigorously map medicine supply chains to refugee camps, which would help identify strategies to improve displaced persons' access to quality-assured medicines.The American Medical Association designates this journal-based CME activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ available through the AMA Ed Hub TM .Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. Refugee HealthRefugee health is a global public health priority. 1,2The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) recently reported that, at the end of 2022, there were over 35 million refugees worldwide and over 100 million people forcibly displaced globally. 3 Forcibly displaced communities frequently use health systems with inadequate capacity to diagnose and manage both communicable and noncommunicable illnesses.Additionally, supply of essential items, including quality-assured medicines, has been difficult to maintain in refugee camps, often due to cuts in aid and ongoing conflict and political unrest. 4,5,6,7edicine supply chain disruption can result in interrupted treatments of chronic illnesses, 1 irrational medicine usage (especially for communicable diseases), and patients utilizing private, unauthorized, or unlicensed vendors, 7,8,9 who might sell poorquality medicines or medicines at increased prices. 10These poor-quality medicines might be substandard-that is, authorized products that fail to meet quality specifications-or falsified by deliberately misrepresenting their identity. 11Poor-quality medicines can lead to immediate treatment failure or have longer-term consequences, such as antimicrobial resistance development in the case of poor-quality antibiotic usage. 12Research has shown that poor-quality antimicrobial medicines continue to proliferate in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), 13 including in and around refugee camps. 14Procurement and supply of medicines for displaced populations, however, is complex, given constantly evolving environments.