# \[e-drug\] Ensuring access to essential drugs in Africa **URL:** \ **Category:** e-drug\ **Created:** [March 15, 2000, 10:51am UTC](https://talk.edrugplus.org/t/e-drug-ensuring-access-to-essential-drugs-in-africa/7657 "2000-03-15T10:51:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Victor\_Adefela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/4af34b/32.png) [@Victor\_Adefela](https://talk.edrugplus.org/u/Victor_Adefela)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2000, 10:51am UTC](https://talk.edrugplus.org/t/e-drug-ensuring-access-to-essential-drugs-in-africa/7657/1 "2000-03-15T10:51:55Z")
E-DRUG: Ensuring access to essential drugs in Africa --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- [The press release below is written by Mr Adefela, WHO/AFRO press officer who is attending the 3rd Anglophone African Essential Drug Programme Managers Meeting in Grabouw, South Africa. WB] WHO-AFRO PRESS RELEASE ENSURING ACCESS TO ESSENTIAL DRUGS IN AFRICA African governments and their partners in the health sector must emphasise equity, availability and affordability in their drug policies and programmes in order to ensure that people have access to essential drugs. This is the consensus among essential drugs programme managers currently attending a meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, on the Intensified Essential Drugs Programme for the African Region. Addressing participants at the meeting on Tuesday, Dr Jonathan Quick, WHO Director of Essential Drugs Programme, said that the organization intended, among other things, to "focus on priority problems, the poor and vulnerable" in the implementation of its programme in the next four years. He pointed out that in many countries less than 50% of the population had regular access to essential drugs and commitment to public drug funding was low. He emphasised that "public financing and social health insurance are the best ways to achieve equity, but this requires effort." He recommended rational selection and use of drugs, sustainable financing, affordable prices and reliable supply systems as ways of achieving equitable access to essential drugs. Dr Eric Goemaere of Medecins Sans Frontieres, which is carrying out a campaign to promote access to essential drugs, also addressed the group. He told them that pharmaceutical research and development were now focused on the needs of the most promising market, the developed countries. At the same time, less and less attention was being given to the needs of the developing countries where communicable diseases are still the leading cause of deaths, he added. He said that some communicable diseases, such as tuberculosis and malaria, were showing growing resistance to certain drugs and therefore urged more active review of the essential drugs list. As a way of ensuring access to essential drugs, he recommended that African governments identify good quality sources and, with partners like WHO, secure production, availability and affordability. Another speaker, Dr Wilbert Bannenberg, of the WHO/South African Drug Action Programme, warned that the new system being introduced by the World Trade Organization and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights would have a negative effect on drug availability. "It will weaken local production, by making it difficult for local industries to compete against the multinationals, and concentrate production in the industrialised countries," he said. To ensure equitable access to essential drugs, the group recommended a number of measures. These include rational drug use; good financial management; introduction of price control for essential and vital drugs; elimination of taxes and duties on essential drugs and raw materials for them; and joint bulk purchasing of essential drugs for priority health problems by countries. Victor Adefela WHO/AFRO information officer adefelav@whoafr.org -- Send mail for the `E-Drug' conference to `e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'. Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'. For additional assistance, send mail to: `owner-e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.