Welcome to the InfoHub. Connect here to the information you need and with people like you who are taking action to improve access to medicines in southern Africa.

In November 2012, at the Joint SADC Ministers of Health and HIV and Aids meeting in Maputo, Mozambique, the draft SADC Strategy for Pooled Procurement of Essential Medicines and Health Commodities was approved. This comes as wonderful news for the region which has had Pooled Procurement on its agenda for many years. The process of formulating the Strategy for Pooled Procurement of Essential Medicines and Health Commodities...

Scientists have uncovered a weakness in HIV that enables certain people to produce powerful antibodies against different strains of the virus. The discovery – the result of years of study – has been hailed as a major breakthrough in research towards an HIV vaccine.
"You cannot do this kind of research without a long-term commitment to research," said Dr Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa (Caprisa) and president of the Medical Research Council.

An estimated 20 million people are alive today as a direct result of tuberculosis (TB) care and control, according to the WHO Global tuberculosis report 2012. “In the space of 17 years, 51 million people have been successfully treated and cared for according to WHO recommendations. Without that treatment, 20 million people would have died,” said Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of the WHO Stop TB Department.

Encouraging good handwashing habits among children can act as a ‘do-it-yourself’ vaccine against diarrhoeal disease, preventing more deaths and illness than any other medical intervention, the United Nations said today, urging governments to give it the priority it deserves. “Halting the spread of diarrhoeal disease is not complicated, or costly, but it is critically important that hand-washing with soap becomes routine for everyone”...

Malaria prevalence in children in Tanzania under the age of five has fallen by 44% since 2007, as shown in the preliminary results of the 2011-2012 Tanzania HIV/Aids and Malaria Indicator Survey (THMIS) released on the 11th of October.
Health and Social Welfare Minister, Dr Hussein Mwinyi said in Dar es Salaam during the launch of the results, that the drop was a big milestone in the country’s efforts to combat malaria.

The 2012 conference will focus on identifying and prioritising country-specific challenges surrounding the management of TB medicines. By the end of the conference, participants will have worked to develop concrete action plans to address priority challenges in their respective countries to ensure effective TB medicine supply, management, and use. Country-specific action plans will then be widely disseminated to solicit technical assistance and support from donors and Stop TB partners.

Zimbabwe is set to attain “universal” coverage for Aids treatment thanks in part to an $84 million disbursement from the United Nations-backed Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The amount will cover costs for life-saving antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to treat 10,000 new patients, the Global Fund announced in a news release. The funds will also finance a six-month ARV buffer stock to guard against treatment interruptions for some 480,000 patients...

A new plan and set of recommendations to improve the supply and access of life-saving health supplies was submitted today to the UN Secretary-General by the members of the United Nations Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children. The Commission is part of the Every Woman Every Child movement and was formed to support the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health...

Even on paper, the task is daunting – going to remote places in Zambia where malaria affects people the most and testing every man, woman, and child for the disease. The goal of this effort is to find and treat all those carrying the malaria parasite before the rains begin in December, signaling the start of another transmission season.

Approximately 600 000 people inhabit Thyolo district in southern Malawi. Most are subsistence-level or migrant farmers who live in extreme poverty and have very little formal education. Thyolo district has one public hospital and 38 primary health centres. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been supporting Thyolo District Hospital and other health-care facilities in the surrounding area since 1997...

Pharmaceutical patents play a key role in the availability and affordability of medicines, as shown by the conflict over access to ARVs in resource-limited countries. Patent protection can also be a contentious issue in high-income countries, when high medicine prices impede access to effective treatment. The School of Law at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in conjunction with The Foundation Open Society Initiative, is offering a two-week certificate course in Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines.

On Tuesday 18 September pharmaceutical, procurement, legal and trade representatives of SADC Member States will meet to hear what the impact could be of the World Trade Organisation's so-called "TRIPS" agreement on procurement and access to medicines, and to discuss what they can do about it.
This Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights agreement binds all WTO Member States to implement stricter patent protection in their national legislation.

Heads of states from Southern African have signed a declaration to tackle TB in the mining sector, that should see ex-miners and their families being followed up for treatment. Mine workers in South Africa currently have the highest rate of TB in the world. One-third of TB infections in the Southern African region are linked to mining activities and recent research has estimated that 3% to 7% of miners are becoming ill with the disease each year.

The Minister of Health and Quality of Life, Mr. Lormus Bundhoo, launched a half-day workshop entitled “Campaign Against Counterfeit Medicines” in Ebène. The event was organised in collaboration with the United States Embassy. In his keynote address, Mr. Bundhoo said that the authorities are determined to raise awareness of the illicit manufacture, trade, associated risks, and the importance of combating counterfeit medicines in Mauritius.

Scientists have found alarming levels of the lung disease tuberculosis in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America that are resistant to up to four powerful antibiotic drugs.
In a large international study published in The Lancet medical journal, researchers found rates of both multi drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) were higher than previously thought and were threatening global efforts to curb the spread of the disease.

A new platform for detecting substandard and counterfeit medicines using microfluidics has been recognised with a grant from Saving Lives at Birth's "Grand Challenge through Development."

Dubbed PharmaCheck, the technology is a portable, field-based tool for assessing the quality of medicines in developing countries with increased accuracy, sensitivity and reliability.

The Treatment Action Campaign and Médecins Sans Frontières are calling on government to include fixed dose combination drugs in the new anti-retroviral (ARV) tender. This demand is not new, but for a long time the Medicines Control Council failed to register these drugs making them unavailable for inclusion in the tender.
Several FDCs have now been registered. Read the TAC/MSF statement here.

In Mozambique there are less than five doctors per 100,000 people, and 11.5% of the adult population are living with HIV. In rural areas, health centres are few and far between.
These dire circumstances caused Médecins Sans Frontières to recognise the need to make optimal use of the scarce resources that do exist and to empower patients to provide each other with support.

A new test to measure the rate of HIV infection in populations is raising hopes among health officials that they’ll be able to figure out more quickly and cheaply which methods work best to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Known as the Limiting Antigen Avidity Enzyme Immunoassay, the test to measure HIV incidence was developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Access to medicines has long been and remains a challenge in African countries. The impact of medicines registration policies in these countries poses a challenge for pharmaceutical companies wanting to register medicines in these countries. The recent AMRHI (African Medicines Registration Harmonisation Initiative) has increased the focus on the need for harmonisation.

The start-up (Penda Health) aims to provide quality, affordable healthcare for the middle and lower income segments of Kenyan society. And to do this technology plays a big part. "We have a system that gives us a warning if any of our drugs are expired, and it forces our providers to dispose of those drugs immediately."
Penda Health's system is bespoke, tracking stock and expiry dates through a simple interface accessible from a PC. When supplies run low, this triggers a warning to make sure more is ordered.

The cost of a highly accurate, rapid diagnostic test for tuberculosis (TB) has been reduced by 40 percent under a new agreement between the US government, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the health financing mechanism, UNITAID...
The agreement will see the cost of cartridges drop from US$16.86 to $9.98, and the price will not increase until 2022. According to the WHO Stop TB Partnership, 45 developing countries and those with a high TB burden will benefit from the price cut.

Over the last couple of months, in our Stories Behind the Statistics series, we shared with readers the overwhelming rate of adolescent pregnancy and its devastating effect on the lives of girls. One of the commitments made on July 11, 2012 at the Family Planning Summit was to increase access to contraceptives for young women and girls. These global commitments could not be timelier...

Charging the developing world to see findings of new scientific research will mean fewer people escape poverty and could cost lives, International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell warned.

He was speaking as he set out a new open access policy and pledged that all researchers receiving DFID funding would now be required to make their findings available for free online.

A first-of-its-kind study released by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) maps progress across 23 countries on HIV treatment strategies, tools and policies needed to increase treatment scale-up. The results show that governments have made improvements to get better antiretroviral treatment (ART) to more people, but implementation of innovative community-based strategies is lagging in some countries.

The Tendai project is moving up a gear and will start focusing efforts on advocacy strategies. SARPAM and its Civil Society partners in the project set this new course at the inaugural Consumer Action Forum on Scaling Up Access to Medicines in SADC in June.
This marks an important turning point for Tendai, when the long days and weeks of preparatory groundwork will be transformed into action that improves access to medicines.

South Africa saved $640 million (R5.2 billion) on the cost of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) from 2011 to 2012 as the new tender process improved price transparency and boosted competition among suppliers. This figure was revealed yesterday in the latest UNAids report, titled “Together We Will End Aids”. The report showed that the prices of ARVs and many other HIV/Aids treatments have declined steeply in the past decade because of reduced procurement costs and rivalry between generic drug makers.

News that India has put in place a $5.4 billion policy to provide free medicines to its people has met with delight in some quarters, disbelief in others. The policy could change the lives of hundreds of millions in a country where the government is reported to have estimated that 40 million citizens are forced into poverty annually because of treatment costs. According to Oxfam, the leading international charity, 23% of ill people in the country simply never seek medical care because they cannot afford to.

In 2011 the World Health Organization approved Xpert MTB/RIF for tuberculosis diagnosis and recommended its rapid implementation. Xpert MTB/RIF is accurate: sensitivity is 72.5 –98.2% (smear-negative and -positive cases, respectively) and specificity 99.2%. Benefits include same-day diagnosis and simultaneous detection of rifampicin resistance. However, the test has some shortcomings and has not had time for thorough evaluation.

The paediatrician’s goal is the same whether doing rounds on wards in Africa, seeing patients in an anti-retroviral treatment (ART) clinic in India or taking part in an international panel discussion in Rome.
Isn’t it time, asks Dr Nandita Sugandhi, that we simplify the language and unite around goals that everyone can understand?

On 11 July 2012, the British Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are launching a bid to make affordable, lifesaving contraceptives, information, services, and supplies available to an additional 120 million women and girls in the world’s poorest countries by 2020. The vision of the London Summit on Family Planning is to ensure women in developing countries have the same freedom to access family planning services – without coercion, discrimination and violence – as women in the developed world.

Health and social justice activists as well as health ministers and key policymakers from across the world will meet in Cape Town this week to address the drivers of inequity which fundamentally impact on the health of the poor.
Two major meetings will draw together various role players from SA and the rest of the world to discuss the issues that are fundamental to the planet and to the country’s health and future development, and plan actions.

The AMRH Programme is working to strengthen the legislative environment for harmonisation of medicines regulations in Africa and to mobilise stakeholders to respond to the absence and/or existence of weak laws that empower countries to effectively regulate medicines as well as harmonisation of regulatory standards and practice among countries through the existing regional structures.

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) has adopted measures that may contribute to a more equitable, cleaner, greener, more prosperous world – and recognises the important linkages between health and development. "The Future We Want" conference outcome, agreed upon by Member States at the June conference, highlights the fact that better health is a “precondition for, an outcome of, and an indicator of sustainable development”.

(Reuters) - When Argentinian car mechanic Jorge Odon was joking around with friends about getting a cork out of an empty wine bottle using a plastic bag, his thoughts were not on maternal mortality... If the enthusiasm shown by Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), is borne out, he'll go down in history as inventor of the first new assisted delivery device since vacuum suction and forceps were introduced centuries ago.

Ten years after the court case between the pharmaceutical industry and the South African government and the Doha Declaration, it is important to check what options developing countries have to protect access to (affordable, and thus generic) medicines.
Indeed we did get more affordable generic ARVs some 10 years ago, but the times are changing.

Following the successful launch of the East African Medicines Regulatory Harmonisation Project, the first meeting of the EAC Regional Steering Committee (RSC) opened in Bujumbura on May 28, 2012 for a two-day session. The RSC comprises officials from the Ministries of Health and the National Medicines Regulatory Authorities of all the partner countries, as well as representatives from the EAC Secretariat, World Health Organization and the World Bank.

The idea that Centres of Regulatory Excellence among National Medicines Regulatory Agencies (NMRAs) should be identified to serve as standard-setters in the SADC region have been doing the rounds for many years. Supporters have argued that the idea is an excellent way to make the most of limited resources and to work in more joined-up ways as a regional community that shares a common future. There is now a window of opportunity to progress this idea into action.

The role that Civil Society has to promote consumer action on access to medicines will be further strengthened through a consensus forum later this month.
Representatives from regional Civil Society networks and their country partner organisations will review the work that they have been doing over the past six months to monitor medicines availability and prices at the community level in eight SADC countries, and present this to prospective new partners and funders.

The 2012 GSMA-mHealth Alliance Mobile Health Summit will be held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, South Africa, from May 29 to June 1.
The event, which is organised by GSMA and the mHealth Alliance, will include talks and debates on a variety of issues about the mobile health market as well an exhibition showcasing innovative mobile health products and services.

The Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) celebrates one year of working with local organisations to send timely and culturally sensitive health and wellness information to new and expectant mothers in 22 countries via mobile phones.
MAMA is a $10 million three-year partnership that addresses the 360,000 maternal deaths and 3.1 million newborn deaths that occur each year.

As the bloodbath continues in the international banking industry, SARPAM’s Oliver Withers has more than one reason to feel pleased that he has escaped the City of London. Oliver, the lead for Impact Investing at SARPAM, returned from the South African Impact Investing Conference in Johannesburg this month feeling certain that the time is exactly right to have made the switch to Impact Investing.

Taking zinc may cut the time adults suffer with a common cold, but consuming it will likely come with unpleasant side effects such as nausea, according to a review of past studies.
Michelle Science, from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and her colleagues compiled data from 17 clinical trials covering 2,121 people, comparing those who took zinc orally to another group that either took a placebo or received no treatment.

TThere have been ongoing shortages of antiretroviral medicines, specifically tenofovir (TDF) and abacavir (ABC) since March in facilities across South Africa. These shortages are compromising the health of patients taking these medicines. We call for urgent resolution of the shortages and for an enquiry into their cause. TDF and ABC are both essential medicines.

Tanzania has been selected to host a three-day private health sector conference from May 14-16 organised by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in collaboration with development partners.
The conference will focus on partnerships with participants from the private and public health sectors and members of the civil society, academia and donor agencies.

At the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit held in Cape Town last week, Ericsson Sub-Saharan Africa shared insights on how Ericsson’s technology is for a force for good to enable the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Mwambu Wanendeya, vice president for communications and sustainability for sub-Saharan Africa, delivered a keynote address titled ‘The Vision of a Networked Society.’

East Africa celebrated the launch of its Medicines Registration Harmonisation Project in March. The Business Day, South Africa’s national business daily, was interested to find out what stakeholders, including the pharmaceutical industry, thought about what this meant for the wider region. SARPAM director Dr Shaun Conway told the newspaper that the development was in the interests of regional integration.

The Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan paid tribute to Namibia for having successfully rolled back malaria cases.
Speaking at the World Malaria Day commemoration at Oshakati on Wednesday, 25 April she lauded the local people, all regional leaders with the support of the central government, for having dramatically reduced malaria cases and putting Namibia on the world map as one of the success stories in combating malaria.

Mama Jane Moyo (52) shudders with anxiety every time a family member falls ill and needs to visit the clinic for medical attention. As if illness in the family was not bad enough, the nearest community health centre, the Malisa Clinic, is a round-trip of more than 25km from her rural homestead in the Zhombe district of Zimbabwe. In order to get to the Malisa Clinic, Mama Moyo and the sick family member must hitch a ride on a donkey or ox cart.

The NEPAD Agency and the East African Community, in collaboration with the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonisation Programme partners, launched the EAC Medicines Registration Harmonisation Project on 30 March 2012 at Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge, Arusha, Tanzania.

The South African government is pleased to announce a joint venture between the South African government, through Pelchem (Pty) Ltd and a leading global pharmaceutical company Lonza Ltd. This joint venture named “Ketlaphela”, will establish the first pharmaceutical plant to manufacture Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) for Anti-Retroviral Medicines (ARV’s) in South Africa.

Lesotho, often called the "Kingdom in the sky", has one of the highest rates of new tuberculosis (TB) cases in the world. The lack of health-care facilities in remote areas makes it hard for people with TB to get tested and treated, so the disease spreads quickly through communities.

There are 33 million people around the world who live with HIV. With access to appropriate medicines, they can all continue to live with it: live longer lives, and healthier ones. New research demonstrates that with access to treatment they are far less likely to pass on the virus to others. This means the key to getting the upper hand on the Aids epidemic is within reach, if only medicines could be made available for all of the people who need them.

Two billion men and women in developing countries cannot get essential medicines. Once every seven years, world experts meet to discuss misuse of medicines in low- and middle income countries at the International Conference for Improving Use of Medicines. Click here to read the press release.

Patent rights seem to supercede patient rights now that the debate about substandard and poor quality medicines has been hijacked by powerful forces. The fight against substandard medicines has been steered away from human rights and public health, energies have been diverted and language has been manipulated to change the focus towards protecting intellectual property and commercial interests.

Unprecedented global campaign launches against pharma company Medicines campaigners target Abbott over the high price of its Aids drug, Kaletra. Meanwhile an independent but GAVI-funded study shows the roll-out of pneumococcal vaccine it is supporting is cost-effective Anti-retroviral drugs. Prices have come down dramatically, but Abbott is accused of keeping the cost of [...]

A Kenyan pharmaceutical company has been given the green light by the World Health Organization (WHO) to start producing antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, which could result in significant savings for the government’s growing treatment programme. “While this is good news for us as a drug manufacturing company, it is [...]

A specific training guide for pharmaceutical reform using the Harvard/World Bank Flagship course model was developed by Professors Michael Reich and Marc Roberts over the last few years.

The course materials have now been published by the World Bank in a book, which is available as a free PDF download