On June 30th the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) launched the country’s first National Medicines Policy (NMP) in Port-au-Prince. The policy, developed by the Haitian MSPP with the support of SIAPS Program, establishes a framework for pharmaceutical regulation in the country. The launch was chaired by Haitian Prime Minister Evans Paul and … Read more
Enhancing patient recordkeeping in Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality The City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, located in the Gauteng Province, is the fifth-largest municipality in South Africa and home to over 2.9 million residents as well as the capital, Pretoria. The municipality operates 24 primary health care facilities providing access to health services, primarily to the uninsured … Read more
In mid-June the USAID-funded SIAPS program assisted the Uzbek Ministry of Health in updating their Logistics Management and Information System (LMIS) for tuberculosis (TB) treatment medicines. Originally implemented in in 2003, the paper-based system was in need of major revisions, and in-country TB drug management specialists hadn’t been trained on the LMIS in over seven … Read more
Improving the availability and accessibility of safe, and affordable quality essential medicines is crucial to fighting common diseases and improving public health around the world. The establishment of national policies that clearly lay out legal and administrative terms for the pharmacy sector, strengthen the national medicine supply system, and promote the rational use of medicines … Read more
Bangladesh has become the 120th full-member country of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Drug Monitoring Center, known as WHO-UMC. Bangladesh is now part of this vital network promoting pharmacovigilance (PV) throughout the world. This membership will enable Bangladesh to continue to monitor adverse drug reactions (ADRs), maintain international standards of reporting, and increase in-country PV … Read more
In Mali, major weaknesses in the pharmaceutical sector include the lack of availability of regular, reliable pharmaceutical management information for decision-making and an inadequate and fragmented logistics system that fails to take the community level into account when planning for inventory management. As a result, stock-outs of lifesaving commodities are frequent at all health service delivery … Read more
Mali faces difficulty in ensuring the availability of HIV and AIDS medicines and supplies. Inadequate tools for quantifying the needs for medicines, poor donor coordination around the national HIV commodities forecasting, and an inadequate supply plan has affected not only the consensus on quantification results of HIV and AIDS commodities, but also the very commitment … Read more
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a threat to both global public health and the global economy. However, public awareness of this issue is still low in countries with limited resources. Mass media can serve as an important ally in raising such awareness. The Ethiopian Food, Medicines, and Healthcare Administration and Control Authority (EFMHACA), collaborated with SIAPS … Read more
SIAPS-Swaziland Senior Technical Advisor Khontile Kunene was selected as a winner of the Mandela Washington Fellowship of the Young African Leaders Initiative – U.S. President Barack Obama’s initiative to invest in the next generation of African leaders. Starting this month, she will complete six weeks of leadership training and mentoring at one of 20 prestigious U.S. universities … Read more
The integrated community case management (iCCM) of common killers of children under five (diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria) has been implemented in many low-income countries to increase access to treatment and prevent child deaths. iCCM, which has been hailed as a successful strategy by the WHO and UNICEF, involves the delivery of timely and low-cost interventions … Read more
