By Awa Sowe
National medicines policies are essential pieces of World Health Organisation’s (WHO) goal of universal health coverage, or health care for all. Strategies to promote these policies aim to increase access to and use of high quality and affordable medicines and health products in every country. WHO supports Member States to develop, implement and monitor national medicines policies that ensure these products are appropriately prescribed and dispensed, affordably priced and protected against high out-of-pocket expenses for users, and accessible to all countries and regions, particularly within health facilities.
It was along this light that the Pharmaceutical Services, of the Ministry of Health (MOH) of The Gambia recently updated its National Medicine Policy 2022-2025 with the theme ‘Equitable access to quality health products for all’. Aware of these external challenges and in line with the National Health Policy (NMP), “Quality Health Care for All” (2021-2030) The Gambian authorities have decided to adapt the national medicine policy. This new national policy integrates a virtuous circle that combines public health logic and an economic logic with a perspective of access to quality health products for all and everywhere in the logic of development of universal health coverage.
The new National Medicine Policy integrates all the actors of the chain (manufacturers, public authorities, patients associations and health professionals) on the strategic intervention areas of the NMP.
Speaking to Mr Babanding Sabally, Director National Pharmaceutical Services, he said that the National Medicine Policy is an international best practice that recommends countries to have a policy to deal with pharmaceutical sector management.
He said that the policy will provide new direction for health sector development and also serves as a basis for driving health sector priorities and planning as a good resource allocation process; where all other pharmaceutical policies would be anchored on to ensure that no single person is left behind.
According to Mr Sabally, health products are an industrial product whose manufacturing process and quality must be controlled and reliable over time.
He went on to note that health is a fundamental human right “and we cannot talk about health without mentioning medical products”. He therefore said the main parameters of the policy deal with making medical products available, affordable and accessible to the population and are being rationally used.
“We want to ensure that the medicines imported in this country are of good quality and maintained all throughout their self- life, the time of importation, storage and distribution”.
He further highlighted that there are regularity authorities such as Medicine Control Agency (MCA), established by an act of parliament - Medicines Acts 2014, which regulates the importation, storage and the distribution of medicine and medicine products in the country.
“There is a mechanism in place to ensure that these things are done in the right manner, this include among other things, medicine registration, quality control and assurance, post-marketing surveillance; all these are geared towards making sure the products are of good quality”.
The Director mentioned that the Pharmacy Council is another implementing agency of the Medicine Policy, responsible for professional practice and standards to make sure products are of good quality and handled by professionals.
On supply chain management of public health, Mr Sabally mentioned that a lot of good things are in this document, the most important among them is the transformation agenda that the MOH is going to take in terms of making the central medical store a vibrant and a national public enterprise.
“To make it easy to manage MOH wants to make central medical store semi-autonomous institution where it will manage all products from procurement, to distribution; to make it a one stop-shop for efficient delivery of medicines”.
On financing of medicines, Sabally explained that, currently there is a dedicated budget line from Ministry of Finance that is used to procure medicine and medicine products but that it is never sufficient to meet the demand of the population. “Government is trying to depart from that and coming up with a sustainable way of financing medicines and medicine products,” he revealed.
He however mentioned the upcoming National Health Insurance Policy, which, he suggested, is one avenue to create an alternating financial mechanism for medicine and medicine supply. “So it is envisaged that the Central Medical Store will work with national Health Insurance to buy medicinal products to ensure that there is no interruption in supply”.
On medicine quality, the Director of National Pharmaceutical Services said the pharmaceutical services is struggling in terms of testing products in The Gambia, as there is no readily available lab for testing of medicine and products. He pointed out that once the products arrived in the country there should be continuous assessment to ensure quality is maintained.
He also lamented that human resource for the pharmaceutical sector is quite thin on the ground. “We are not present in everywhere we should be. “So the policy intends to look into the human resources aspect of it for the betterment of the pharmacy sector”.
In conclusion, Mr Sabally assured that the pharmacy sector will implement the policy focusing on access to quality essential medicines for the populace, “as government endeavors to foster stronger partnerships for better pharmaceutical service and subsequently better health for all Gambians”.