Date: 2017-11-29 10:19:59 ID: 1773
Accra, Ghana, 27 November 2017: The Deputy Minister of Health of Ghana officially launched the Medicines Harmonisation Regulations project in West Africa (ECOWAS-MRH).
The ceremony took place during a diner organised for the purpose, on the side lines of the 3rd Scientific Conference on Medicines Regulation in Africa.
The launch, organised by the West Africa Health Organisation (WAHO) took place in the presence of a group of personalities from the fifteen ECOWAS countries, represented by the Directors of the National Medicines Regulatory Authorities (NMRA) regional and sub-regional institutions (WAEMU, EAC, CEMAC, IGAD) many Technical and financial partners (World Bank, AU, NEPAD, USAID, BMGF, WHO, UNIDO, etc.) associations of pharmaceutical companies and civil society organisations.
Dr Kofi Busia, Director of Primary Health Care (DPHC) represented the DG of WAHO, Dr.Xavier CRESPIN, on the occasion.
Worth 3 million US dollars and fully funded by the World Bank, the ECOWAS-MRH project will help improve the availability of quality, safe and effective medicines and vaccines on the pharmaceutics market of the Economic Community of West African States through the strengthening and harmonisation of the regulatory systems, efficiency and transparency in the registration of medicines and vaccines.
The ECOWAS-MRH project will be beneficial to all the people of the West Africa region, estimated to be about 300 million inhabitants, and particularly to the poor who tend to get their medicines supply from the informal market, which is the convenient place for the distribution low quality, fake, improperly labelled, false and counterfeit medicines.
It will also benefit manufacturers of pharmaceutical products, since it will contribute towards a significant reduction of the registration period, consolidate the competencies of experts responsible for the certification of medicines and vaccines as well as the transparency of the results from the assessment of applications for medicines Market Supply Authorisation (MSA).
It must be emphasised that the availability of quality pharmaceutical products remains a major concern for West African countries, due to the various gaps arising from, among others, the lapses in the regulatory and supply systems, inadequate level of cooperation among institutions responsible for applying the laws, low human resource capacity, excessive dependency on imported pharmaceutical products, lack of the requisite infrastructure for medicines quality control as well as lack of a forum for information exchange among agencies.
This official launch will be followed by a technical meeting on 1st and 2nd December 2017, bringing together the NMRAs and project implementation partners to discuss the details of the practical arrangements (governance, financial management, procurement and monitoring/evaluation) for the project implementation.
