By Usu-emma Sindila
8th September 2010
Comments
Bill Gates
The world’s second richest man, Bill Gates, is planning to give out a grant of USD 9.5 million to the East Africa Community (EAC) to support its medicine programme.
A statement issued on Monday by the EAC Secretariat and signed by a representative of the World Bank, Senior Health Specialist Andreas Seiter, said the Community was to receive the said amount from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to work out modalities of a harmonised regime for the registration of medicines in the region.
Seiter said there was every indication that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through the World Bank, would accept a proposal to fund the project on Medicines Registration Harmonization in the EAC partner states.
Seiter said at the joint meeting of the EAC secretariat, World Bank, NEPAD, WHO and GTZ held at the EAC headquarters in Arusha recently.
"I believe early next year the review of the proposal of the project on Medicines Registration Harmonisation will be done and at that time the Gates Foundation, through World Bank Trust Fund, will be in a position to give out a grant of USD 9.5 million to EAC," said Seiter.
The one-day Medicine Registration Harmonisation meeting was convened with the aim of negotiating a harmonized and functioning medicines registration system within the East African Community in accordance with national and internationally recognised policies and standards and to come up with mechanisms whereby the partner states can agree on common technical documents for registration of medicines.
These standards are targeted to be implemented in three years in at least three of the partner states and in all partner states within five years. The project, expected to commence in 2011, is estimated to cost approximately USD 10 million.
Earlier, EAC’s Principal Health Officer Dr Stanley Sonoiya explained that the EAC was in the process of strengthening the human resource capacity of the health sector at the secretariat.
According to Dr Sonoiya, the other objectives of the meeting were to implement a common information management system for medicine registration in each partner state through national medicine registration authorities, to implement a quality management system in each of the partner states and build regional and national capacity to implement medicines registration harmonisation in the EAC.
The EAC currently has six national medicine registration authorities (NMRAs), all of which have different requirements/standards for application of registration of pharmaceutical products and whose guidelines are not comprehensive to cover all the key regulatory requirements.
However, there is a need to institutionalise and fast track the regional harmonisation of medicines regulation in order to fully realise the benefits of the growing pharmaceutical industry in the region and also to ensure easy access to affordable, safe and quality essential medicines and health supplies for both local use and export to the international markets.
The amount requested for the project is USD 9,990,186 and the project duration is 60 months.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was founded by multibillionaire Bill and wife Melinda Gates with the aim of enhancing healthcare and reduce extreme poverty.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
Cynthia Eyakuze
Director, Public Health Watch Project
Public Health Program, Open Society Institute
400 West 59th Street, New York , NY 10019
tel +1 212.548 0159 mob +1 917.640 6394
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