Wada Expands Drugs Ops to Oceania, Asia

A World Anti-doping Agency (Wada) programme, aimed at building cooperation with law enforcement in Europe, led to seizures of more than 25 tonnes of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), and officials now hope to see a similar impact in Oceania and Asia.

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Wada launched the Intelligence and Investigations (I&I) programme in Europe in 2022, hoping it might lead to five anti-doping operations being launched among the 48 countries that participated.

Nearly a year on from the end of the programme, there are more than 100 operations still ongoing across the continent, with over 25 tonnes of illicit PEDs seized and 25 laboratories shut down, Wada's I&I director Gunter Younger told Reuters.

"They prevented more than 500 million doses of PEDs coming on the global market, which is really significant," said the German.

"So this is where our management decided, wow, that's a good project, we want to continue. Now we are hoping to have the same impact, perhaps on a different scale, in Asia and Oceania."