UN and AU sign landmark agreement guaranteeing access to safe health products

The World Well being Group (WHO), a United Nations physique, and the African Medicines Company (AMA), an African Union physique, signed a Framework Settlement for Collaboration on Friday, aiming to strengthen regulatory methods and enhance entry to protected, environment friendly and quality-assured well being merchandise throughout the African continent.

The Framework Settlement for Collaboration establishes a partnership between WHO and AMA to advance the harmonization of authorized frameworks throughout Africa, along with supporting the operationalization of AMA as a continental regulatory establishment that oversees entry to protected and quality-assured medical merchandise.

Dr Yukio Nakatani, WHO assistant director-general for well being methods, entry, and knowledge, mentioned: “The launch of this Framework Settlement for Collaboration is a decisive step in direction of constructing a extra unified, environment friendly and resilient regulatory ecosystem in Africa, benefiting not solely the continent, however the world.”

The settlement addresses longstanding challenges which have hindered African nations’ entry to protected and high quality well being care merchandise, resembling fragmented regulatory methods, restricted market oversight, restricted native manufacturing, and the specter of substandard and falsified medical merchandise. It offers a basis for joint operational plans over the subsequent three to 5 years, throughout which WHO and AMA will work collectively to make sure that African nations have entry to protected and high quality medical merchandise. Key methods embody selling regulatory harmonization, strengthening security surveillance and responses to falsified well being merchandise, and supporting native innovation and manufacturing of medicines.

WHO emphasised that this settlement represents a “historic alternative” to remodel the regulation of medical merchandise throughout Africa by enhancing cooperation, lowering regulatory fragmentation, and accelerating entry to safer medicines for all Africans. With a view to pursue these targets, each WHO and AMA urged member states and worldwide companions to assist these efforts by advancing the required reforms, accelerating treaty ratifications, and investing in a trusted and harmonized regulatory ecosystem.

The Framework Settlement for Collaboration was launched on the margins of the Seventy-ninth World Well being Meeting (WHA79), which gathered ministers of well being, African Union establishments, nationwide regulatory authorities, and world companions to strengthen commitments to regulatory reform and funding in regulatory methods strengthening. The settlement additionally comes at a vital time for Africa, because the continent offers with the continuing Ebola outbreak within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda. On Could 17, the WHO director-general declared the outbreak a public well being emergency of worldwide concern below Article 12 of the Worldwide Well being Laws.