UGANDA – African Union delegates have started reviewing the bid for Uganda to host African Medicine Agency (AMA) headquarters.
The African Medicines Agency is a proposed specialized agency of the African Union intended to facilitate the harmonization of medical regulation throughout the African Union.
The Agency will be crucial in the development of pharmaceutical products in Africa to boost the continent’s drugs and vaccine production.
The regulator will also strengthen health systems and immunization capacities of the African continent.
Additionally, it will provide a streamlined regulatory authority to improve quality medicines access and combat substandard imports in the continent.
A treaty establishing the African Medicines Agency recently came into force and the next step in transforming the AMA from a treaty to an actual institution is to decide on a host country for the agency’s headquarters.
The race to establish AMA comes after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the region’s dependence on imported vaccines and other pharmaceuticals for instance, just over 5% of medicines and 1% of vaccines consumed by the population of 1.2 billion people are produced locally.
Uganda is among the eight countries seeking to host the continental regulatory agency including Rwanda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said that the country has the required capacity to host the African Medicine Agency headquarters following its investments in developing and manufacturing drugs over the years.
“The issue is whether Africa will move with us since we started producing full triple-therapy generic antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) for people living with HIV/AIDS a long time ago. Why should foreigners make money out of our sicknesses and not us?” challenged Mr. Museveni.
Uganda has been making progress in the pathogenic economy where the explanation of long-run economic growth combines the effects of population growth, fundamental principles of microbiology and public health.
The nation begun producing AIDS drugs at a local US$38 million pharmaceutical factory in 2007 in an effort to increase the number of HIV-positive people accessing the life-prolonging drugs across the country and the East African region.
In addition to ARVs, the plant produces anti-malaria medication Lumartem which is significantly cheaper than the World Health Organization-recommended first-line brand Coartem.
Uganda has invested heavily in the medical sector, with more infrastructure coming up given its history with pandemics such as HIV/Aids, Ebola, Marburg and now coronavirus.
“These epidemics have created opportunities for Ugandan people to build critical care capacity since they are currently many highly educated and qualified human resources available,” noted Museveni.
He further revealed that Uganda is now at advanced stage six in two of the diseases vaccine developments while urging African countries to work in a more collaborative way to produce vaccines in Africa for Africans.
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