Overview of potential adverse effects of human pharmaceuticals in Africa aquatic ecosystem

Drugs are used for the treatment of various medical conditions in humans, wild animals, livestock, and plants, finding their way into rivers, lakes, and drinking water systems. These environmental conditions can have undesirable effects on both aquatic and human health. There has been a steady increase in the availability of information on contamination of water sources caused by pharmaceuticals in some African countries. The objective of this study was to conduct data mining on published works on the occurrence of human pharmaceuticals in Africa. All available data using different search engines, web data, and google scholar was assembled to generate useful information. The results revealed that twenty-eight countries have well-documented information on pharmaceutical aquatic contamination. There is a gap in information concerning their occurrence in aquatic biota. This study also focused to produce results that give an overview on human pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environments in Africa.