The Prevent Detect Respond framework is a public health-focused approach promoted by the WHO to help countries, regulators, and health systems protect patients from substandard and falsified medicines. It provides a structured way to strengthen medicine safety—from securing the supply chain, to identifying suspicious products, to responding effectively when incidents occur. Health professionals, especially pharmacists, prescribers and nurses, play an important role in implementing this framework on the front line.

Prevention focuses on reducing opportunities for substandard and falsified medicines to enter your health facility, pharmacy, or patient pathway.

Roles and Responsibilities for Health Professionals:

Pharmacists & Supply Staff

• Source medicines only from licensed distributors.
• Maintain proper storage conditions and inventory systems, including batch and lot traceability.
• Ensure expired or unused products are removed promptly and disposed of safely so they cannot re-enter circulation.
• Use good dispensing practices: correct repackaging and handling to avoid product deterioration.
• Counsel patients to use legitimate pharmacies and to avoid unsafe online pharmacies.

Prescribers (Physicians and Nurses)

• Avoid prescribing medicines unavailable within your system or financially inaccessible, which may drive patients to unsafe sources.
• Ensure patients understand their treatment plan.
• Counsel patients to use legitimate pharmacies and to avoid unsafe online pharmacies.

All Healthcare Providers

• Raise awareness within your community about risks of substandard and falsified medicines.
• Communication must be clear, calm, and non-alarmist to avoid unnecessary fear, stigma, or loss of trust in the health system.

While some substandard and falsified medicines are difficult to identify and only laboratory testing can accurately detect these medicines, frontline vigilance and visual checks are important steps in detection.

Roles and Responsibilities for Health Professionals:

Perform Routine Visual Inspections

• Inspect packaging, seals, labels, leaflets, and batch numbers.
• Watch for any irregularities in appearance, color, odor, texture, or particulate matter.
• Ensure products match reference samples when available.

Recognize Patient-Level Red Flags

• Unexpected lack of clinical response, unusual side effects, or treatment failures may signal a substandard and falsified medicine.
• Ask patients about where they obtained the medicine.

Cultivate a Culture of Safe Reporting

• Report suspected substandard and falsified medicines promptly.
• Staff should feel protected, not blamed, for raising concerns.

Once a suspected substandard and falsified medicine is identified, quick action reduces harm.

Roles and Responsibilities for Health Professionals:

Immediate Actions

• Stop using and distributing the suspected product.
• Secure the product to prevent accidental use.
• Notify regulatory authorities (e.g., national regulatory authority), suppliers, and internal leadership.

Support Risk Assessment

• Provide detailed information on batches, sources, patient exposure, adverse reactions, and where the product was stored or dispensed.
• Help assess the severity of clinical impact and the scale of distribution.

Assist With Follow-Up

• Cooperate with recalls and patient notifications.
• Share data with surveillance systems.

Maintain Professional and Transparent Communication

• Communicate with patients and colleagues in a balanced, factual manner to avoid unnecessary alarm while ensuring safety.