• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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African stakeholders mull strategies to combat fake, substandard drugs in continent

Poor countries pay up to 30 times more for medicines

Prominent scientists and stakeholders across 43 countries in Africa are currently in Abuja, Nigeria over the next four days to map out strategies to combat the menace of substandard and falsified medicine in Africa at the ongoing African Medicines Quality Forum (AMQF).

The 3rd annual meeting of the AMQF is being hosted by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) with the theme “2020: Perfect Vision for Quality Medicines in Africa”

Osagie Ehanire, Nigeria’s minister of health, who declared the forum open on Tuesday, tasked members to immediately map out a continental strategy towards the reduction and complete eradication of substandard and falsified medicine in Africa.

Ehanire said the emergence of AMQF has given Africa a chance to address the menace. He called on the Forum to strengthen the collaboration among African medicine Regulatory authorities and assist member countries in developing capacity and structure to fight the proliferation of substandard and falsified medicines.

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“I also enjoin AMQF to develop a framework to conduct regular medicine quality survey across regional and national boundaries and to provide government with reliable data on distribution of substandard and falsified medicines and also for planning safe health care delivery to our citizens.

“I urge AMQF to use this platform to facilitate information sharing on best practices to set conformity assessment standards, provide technical leadership and also serve as an advocacy platform for global visibility of national quality control laboratories in Africa,” the minister said.

Also, the Director-General, NAFDAC, Mojisola Adeyeye said the aim of the forum was to promote quality control among national laboratories, build and strengthen the capacity of African countries in medicine quality control and regional post-market surveillance.

“We want to make sure that Africans get the medicine they ought to get,” the DG said.

The AMQF is the Quality Control (QC) voice of the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization (AMRH). Objectives of the forum include to: complete the roadmap for strengthening National Quality Control Laboratories (NQCL) infrastructure and systems to help make informed, reliable and consistent regulatory decisions, draw up a proposal for regional/Cross-border survey of medicines of public health importance in Africa among others.

The Forum is convened in collaboration with AUDA-NEPAD, USP, WHO and supported by World Bank.