A five-day workshop on procurement system for essential medicines will close today at Hotel Novotel, Kigali. It involved all  East African Community member states.

While addressing participants, World Health Organisation (WHO) representative, Dr. Jack Abdoulie, said that the workshop serves as a testimony to the strong will of the member countries of the EAC to ensure more rational utilization of essential medicines.

"This marks an important milestone in our collective quest to make essential drugs more affordable and accessible,” Abdoulie said.

Abdoulie continued to say that the workshop is an opportunity to solve common problems and also examine modalities for putting in place viable mechanisms for group-contracting procurement as well as regulatory structures which will be essential to safeguarding the quality of medical products.

He also revealed that the WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Luise Sambo has vowed to promote health initiatives in the EAC.

Recently Viateur Mutanguha, the National Coordinator of Pharmacies Taskforce in the Ministry of Health announced the intention of EAC member countries to have a common pharmaceutical policy to control the flow of substandard medicine.

The theme of the workshop was ‘Regional strategy and implementation framework for group-contracting pooled bulk procurement of essential medicines and harmonization medicines regulatory framework and protocol in East Africa’.

Issues tackled included Procurement legislation, prices of medicine and supply chain. The workshop was organized by Pharmacy Task Force and CAMERWA supported by other stakeholders including World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health.

Ends