The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), has announced the creation of a pooled African medicines procurement mechanism at the 37th African Union Summit, which ended yesterday.  The mechanism aims to spearhead “a new era of predictable demand for African manufacturers, empowering them to plan for the long-term and establish a robust […] Continue reading ->
CAIRO, Egypt -Some 70% of countries globally have weak national medicines regulatory systems. But the launch of the African Medicines Agency should help address many of the shortcomings on the African continent, said speakers at the 6th Scientific Conference on Medicines Regulation in Africa (SCoMRA), convened here in mid-December.  The conference, organized by the African Union […] Continue reading ->
LUSAKA, Zambia – Ensuring that Africa can manufacture its own vaccines will represent “the second independence of Africa”, Dr Jean Kaseya, Director General of the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said at the start of the Conference for Public Health in Africa 2023 (CPHIA) on Monday. “Many African countries got their […] Continue reading ->
A new Health Technology Access Pool (H-TAP), which aims to broaden the scope of IP and patent-sharing with low- and middle-income countries and a new African Union co-sponsored ‘manufacturing support platform’ were among the initiatives announced this week at the Second World Local Production forum in The Hague. The global forum, the second ever to […] Continue reading ->
The global health landscape is marked by paradoxes. The last several decades have been shaped by progress and setbacks – new medicines and emerging diseases, technological advancements and entrenched inequities.  The Ebola outbreaks and COVID-19 pandemic exposed many of the already existing inequities in our global health ecosystem, from unequal access to vaccines to restrictive […] Continue reading ->
The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, explicitly excluded the world’s five largest emitters of greenhouse gasses – China, the United States, Russia, India and Japan – from his Climate Ambition Summit, held Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The United Kingdom, another major polluter, was notably absent from the summit, amid reports […] Continue reading ->
Health systems in Africa are under considerable strain: rapid demographic change, rising non-communicable diseases, and emerging and re-emerging threats such as COVID-19 and Ebola are increasing demands on limited health services. Africa, however, faces a challenging period in health financing to meet these increasing needs. Health spending in most countries remains far short of what is […] Continue reading ->
Strengthening Africa’s medicines regulatory framework is key to achieving the “bold goal” of having 60% of the continent’s vaccines produced locally by 2040, said Margareth Ndomondo-Sigonda, head of health at the African Union’s development agency, AUDA-NEPAD. But only 7% of African country’s national medicines regulatory agencies (NMRA) have “moderately developed capacity”, and more than 90% […] Continue reading ->