Ghana hosts workshop on anti-malarial drugs (Back Page)

A five-day international workshop on the safety, quality and efficacy of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recommended anti-malarial medicine within the sub-region has opened in Accra.
The workshop, which dealt specifically with the WHO recommended Artemisinim Combination Therapy (ACT) for the treatment of malaria, was attended by regulators of pharmaceutical products and manufacturers from five English-speaking West African countries, namely, Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.
The workshop is aimed at helping local pharmaceutical companies in capacity building to enable them to produce ACTs by WHO standards.
Currently, all African countries have officially changed malaria treatment policies from chloroquine mono-therapy to ACTs, and since many of them are recipients of the Global Fund, they are required to purchase ACTs from manufacturers and suppliers which are certified by WHO.
In his remarks, a representative from the WHO headquarters, Dr Milan Smid, said ACTs represented a category of essential anti-malarials for which a complex regulatory evaluation of quality, safety and efficacy was needed because of the combination of active principles.
Dr Smid pointed out that as local manufacturers of ACTs increased and new combination products were submitted, it was critical that both manufacturers and national regulatory authorities had the tools to develop good quality dossiers to evaluate them effectively for the safety of the people.
He said the WHO contributed to the increased availability of ACTs by including them in the prequalification programme initiated by the United Nations and expressed the hope that the workshop would provide participants with adequate information on the programme to enable them to benefit from the programme.
Addressing the participants, a Deputy Minister of Health, Dr (Mrs) Gladys Norley Ashitey, said the quality of pharmaceutical products should not be compromised under any circumstance.
According to her, the circulation of substandard and counterfeit medicines did not only threaten the safety of patients but also undermined healthcare delivery which was vital in reducing morbidity and restoring health.
She said to achieve the desired objective, the government of Ghana had, over the past eight years, stepped up its support for the Food and Drugs Board (FDB) to strengthen its capacity to enable it to ensure that quality medicines were provided for Ghanaians.
The chairman for the programme, who is also the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the FDB, Rev Jonathan Martey, said problems relating to the safety and quality medicines existed in many countries, adding that some incidents had ended in tragedy, with children being the most vulnerable.
He identified the causes of such incidents as the use of medicines containing toxic substances or impurities, as well as medicines whose claims had not been verified, among others, and, therefore, called for effective medicine regulation to ensure safety, quality and efficacious medicine for the benefit of all.