Background Medicines of poor quality are currently prevailing problems undermining the quality of health care services in veterinary and human medicine. In this study, physico-chemical quality of veterinary medicines was evaluated. Methods A total of 959 veterinary medicines samples were collected during routine regulatory activities, i.e. pre-registration, re-registration, consignment checking and post-marketing surveillance, in Ethiopia. The samples were transported to Animal Products, Veterinary Drug and Feed Quality Assessment Centre (APVD-FQAC), which is the quality control laboratory of the Veterinary Drug and Feed Administration and Control Authority (VDFACA) and stored until analysis. The samples were subjected to visual inspection and chemical analysis following the United States, European or British Pharmacopoeias, or manufacturer’s methods. Results The findings revealed that 12 (1.3%) of tested products showed defects in physical characteristics, packaging, or labelling information, while a total of 66 (6.9%) samples of the investigated products failed to comply with the Pharmacopoeias and supplier’s specification limit set for assay. Of these, 60 samples did not comply with the minimum assay specification limit. Conclusion Overall, 8.2% of the investigated veterinary medicine samples did not comply with the specification set for the investigated quality attributes and thus were categorized as of poor quality. This indicates the need for continued strengthening of regulatory functions.

This study was conducted to evaluate the quality of different brands of injectable oxytetracycline solutions circulating in the legal markets  of Addis Ababa with respect to physicochemical characteristics and sterility. Nine brands of oxytetracycline with thirteen different batches were randomly purchased from veterinary drug stores in the city. The physical assessment was performed by using a checklist that was  prepared based on the World Health Organization guidelines. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) was performed by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography. The sterility test was assessed by using the direct  inoculation method. All samples passed the identity, the assay, and the sterility tests. However, there were statistically significant  differences (P<0.05) among brands in the quantity of API. The highest percentage of the API was recorded in brand G (112.12%± 1.86) while the lowest was seen in brand H (92.61%± 1.5). This study revealed that all brands passed both physicochemical and sterility tests except for the differences in the API level among brands. Strict regulation, monitoring, and wider-scale surveillance are required to assure sustainable control of substandard, unsterile, and falsified pharmaceutical products in the country.

The study was carried out with the aim to isolate Staphylococcus aureus from camel and goat raw milk and determine their antimicrobial susceptibility pattern. 204 raw milk samples were collected from randomly selected lactating camels (n=62) and lactating goats (n=142) in live-stock producing pastoralists' areas of Somali region for isolation and identification of S. aureus. Antibiotic susceptibility tests were performed on all S. aureus isolates to 16 antibiotics by Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method. Twenty three (11.27% of the total) S. aureus strains were isolated. Four (6.45%) strains were isolated from camel raw milk samples and 19 (13.34%) from goat raw milk samples. S. aureus isolates showed resistance to Nalidixic acid, Polymixin B, and Penicillin G. S. aureus isolates were sensitive to vancomycin, ciprofloxacin, cefoxitin, cephalotin, gentamycin, Doxycycline, kanamycin, trimethoprimsulfamethoxazole, chloramphenicol, norfloxacin, and erythromycin. Multi drug resistance was detected in 69.2% of the isolates. The present study has demonstrated the existence of alarmingly high level of multiple antimicrobial resistances of S. aureus among camel and goat milks.

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