ECOWAS moves against fake, sub-standard drugs

WEST African countries have moved a step forward on the eradication of fake and sub-standard drugs in the region as they agreed to harmonize the process of medicine registration in the region.At a meeting of the West African Health Organisation (WAHO) held in Abuja, they took cognisance of the progresses recorded by their counterparts in East Africa and agreed to quicken the medicine registration harmonisation.The three-day meeting attended bychief executives, inspectors and registrars of medicines from Cape Verde, Gamba, Ghana, Guineas, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria dwelled largely on the quality management systems of the regulatory authorities and the harmonisation of a common technical document of medicines registration in the region.The officials are expected to establish workable plans to facilitate access to essential medicines in ECOWAS, bridge the gap between the pharmaceutical industry and regulators, make progress in medicine registration harmonisation, promote supply of medicines from Africa to Africa, and promote greater collaborations among medicine regulatory authorities in member-states.Programme Officer at WAHO, Mrs. Sybil Ossei-Agyeman Yeboah, stressed that more work needed to be done to ensure quality of drugs in West Africa. 'More work needs to be done to ensure public health systems are right. We will take advantage of this meeting to harmonise procedures. We want to put strategies together to ensure availability of quality products to our people within the region,' she said.Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Dr. Paul Orhii, who spoke at the meeting, described the gathering as an important one which the regulators had looked forward to. He noted that counterfeiters were getting more creative and desperate and called for more concerted effort by ECOWAS countries to check the activities of such producers.
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