WAHO Launches ECOWAS Medicines Regulatory Harmonization Project

Deputy Minister for Health, Kingsley Aboagye-Gyedu

The West African Health Organisation (WAHO) has launched the ECOWAS Medicines Regulatory Harmonization project to ensure quality, safe and efficacious medicines for the Region.

Speaking at the ceremony, the Deputy Minister for Health, Kingsley Aboagye-Gyedu said accessibility to quality medicines has remained a major concern despite the concerted efforts of the Governments and Development Partners in the West African Region.

The sector Minister indicated that NEPAD/WAHO assessment in 2011 revealed that the medicines regulatory systems in the Sub-Saharan African countries are affected by fragmented legal framework, limited autonomy, lack of sustainable funding, poor infrastructure and institutional capacity, weak capacity to apply the Law, lack of cooperation amongst the Authorities are responsible for applying the law.

According to him, inadequate human resources, dependence on imported products, inadequate capacity of the Quality Control Laboratories to meet the requirements of the WHO Prequalification, lack of information sharing amongst the Agencies and proliferation of illicit and counterfeit medical product are some of the major challenges.

Hon. Kingsley Aboagye-Gyedu added that stronger regional collaboration and coordination for greater achievements for the West African Region was established in June, 2014 by the West African Health Organization (WAHO), under the leadership of ECOWAS and the West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) to harmonize the regulation of medicines in order to build sufficient regulatory capacity to approve medicines for public health benefits, in a timely manner ensuring acceptable quality, safety, and efficacy standards within the framework of the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization (AMRH) Initiative.

He indicated that the intend of all these efforts in the region is to ensure that regulatory oversight on medicines imported and produced locally are stringently monitored, and the high incidence of substandard and falsified medicines circulating in our market are reduced to the barest limit.

The sector minister emphasised that the quality of life of the population is very important to the public and it depends equally on the type of medicines they take.

“We therefore look forward to seeing that the capacities of the regulatory authorities on the continent are developed to mitigate the challenges and the risks associated with healthcare,” he posited.