CPMR Executive Director Recognized At Ghana Pharma Awards, 2020

The Executive Director of the Centre for Plant Medicine Research, Dr Kofi Bobi Barimah has been recognised as one of the Top Ten Chief Executives of the pharmaceutical industry at the recently held Ghana Pharma Awards 2020.

The award was the climax of a resoundingly successful night for the Centre. The Centre had earlier been awarded as one of the Top Ten pharmaceutical organisations in Ghana.

The awards organised by Globe Productions in collaboration with the Pharmacy Council, Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana, Ghana Standards Authority and Graphic Business brought together leading players in pharmacy practice, pharmacy manufacturing, academia and research to deliberate on the capacity of the industry in the era of COVID-19.

Receiving the award, the Executive Director of the Centre for Plant Medicine Research, Dr Kofi Bobi Barimah acknowledged the key players from within and without the Centre who have contributed so far to researching herbal solutions in the fight against COVID-19.

“It is critically important for us, as a country, to widen as much as possible, our search for solutions as we seek to defeat this dreadful disease. We, at CPMR, are utterly determined to make plant medicine relevant in this enterprise. I, therefore, would humbly yet urgently invite pharmaceutical organisations to partner us to explore this promising field” said Dr Barimah.

Meanwhile, earlier in the week the Ghana Pharma Summit was held under the theme “COVID-19: The Capacity of the Pharma Industry, What Lies Ahead”

The Deputy Executive Director of CPMR, Dr Alfred Ampomah Appiah addressing the participants said the Centre was making efforts to ensure the safe production of herbal products.

“We are working hard to develop products that can support the immune system; to develop a product that can act as an antioxidant to manage the disease condition. Treatment will take some time because we’ll have to do a series of test and ensure that whatever you have is active against the virus,” he added.

He revealed that the Centre is working to standardise the usage of plants with anti-viral properties to check their abuse on the market.

“These things will have to be standardised. You hear that people have gone for these herbs and are boiling and drinking them; they are medicines and if you take beyond a certain quantity they can harm you.

Therefore, we will have to formulate standard dosage forms to avoid harm to consumers or patients. That is our responsibility, but we need this to be done with research before we can move it into the industry for large-scale production.”