Africa-Press – Namibia. THE Ministry of Health and Social Services yesterday launched the country’s second national medicine policy (NMP) – 24 years after launching its first.
Deputy health minister Esther Muinjangue, speaking on behalf of health minister Kalumbi Shangula, at the event said there has been significant developments in the pharmaceutical and health industry, both domestically and internationally.
“Therefore, there was a need to revise the first NMP of 1998 to be more responsive to emerging health needs within communities, and to align objectives and strategies of the policy with current national strategic development plans,” Muinjangue said.
She said the policy document, which guides all strategic and operational level activities of the pharmaceutical sector, has 11 strategic objectives.
Muinjangue said these objectives are organised to cover the following pillars: legislation, regulation and quality assurance, local manufacturing of medicines, the selection of medicines, medicine supply, the rational use of medicines, and new, emerging and re-emerging diseases and medicines.
Muinjangue urged stakeholders to draft a roadmap for prioritised NMP strategies to focus on major challenges in the health sector.
“ . . . strengthening pharmaceutical regulatory capacity, improvement in procurement practices of health products, improving warehousing and distribution capacity of the central and regional medical stores, ensuring supply chain integrity, and improving the interoperability of health information and pharmaceutical inventory/stock management tools across the supply chain and beyond . . . “ she said.
Muinjangue said launching the second NMP means the ministry has a comprehensive policy framework that guides its services in Namibia’s pharmaceutical sector, which includes training and research, manufacturing, regulation, and quality assurance.
Executive director of health and social services Ben Nangombe said the policy needs to address the challenges the ministry is faced with.
“We have made some good progress over the years, but we still have some challenges. We need to ensure accountability for stock at different levels.
“We need to ensure we have an optimal standardised system to track and trace the medicine we receive,” he said.
He said the ministry has started doing this to some extent with antiretroviral medication, but still has a long way to go.
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