FDB to expand local pharmaceutical manufacturing list

The Food and Drugs Board (FDB) is to expand the list of products restricted for local manufacturing to enable local pharmaceutical industries to export to other countries. The list would move from 13 to 40 to include simple straightforward mixtures like vitamins and some anti-biotics, which could be manufactured locally and also, reduce the rate of importation of those drugs. Mr. Emmanuel Kyeremanteng Agyarko, Chief Executive Officer of FDB said this when he addressed the opening of a four-day training in Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) for quality control and production managers of local pharmaceutical companies in Accra on Tuesday. The GMP training, attended by 64 participants from 35 local pharmaceutical industries and supported by the World Health Organisation (WHO) is to ensure improvement in GMP compliance level, ensure consistency in production and quality standards in pharmaceutical productions in the country. Participants would be taken through analytical method, validation, qualification and collaboration of equipment, process validation and stability studies. Dr Kyeremanteng Agyarko noted that the local manufacturers had the capacity to meet the demands in the sub-region with quality assurance since Ghana was the next to Nigeria whose production for local manufacturing was 100. "We need to take this courageous decision to serve as a challenge, raise the status and empower the local pharmaceutical industries to meet international and world standards". He noted that other, countries in the sub-region were importing certain drugs from Ghana and Nigeria and urged Ghanaian industries to rise to meet the challenge, "so we will all stop importing drugs from the western world." The yardstick to be used to measure the level of quality of pharmaceutical products for these industries would be GMP compliance. Mr Kyeremanteng Agyarko urged the local manufacturers to put in place the needed equipment to enable them meet the GMP standards. Ms Sophia Twum-Barimah, Public Affairs Officer of WHO read the speech on behalf of Dr Joachim Saweka, WHO Country Representative said the increasing globalisation of commerce and trade, and the merging of pharmaceutical companies were in line with the international production and called for international norms and standards for medicines to be of paramount importance. She noted that medicines were relevant to priority health needs and public needs, high standards of quality and safety and therefore efficacy of medicines must be ensured whilst reliable systems of medicines regulation and legislation were adhered to. "In the drive towards increasing profits, exuberant promotion and increasing demand for medicines, we need to protect the population to ensure that they benefit from proper access to the right medicines, medicines that are safe, of the best quality and medicines that have been prescribed in optimum conditions". Ms Tuwm-Barimah pledged WHO's continuous support for the capacity building of the local industries for more local manufacturers to be pre-qualified for the production of medicines to serve the priority health needs for both local and international people. Mr Theophilus Corquaye, former Chief Executive of FDB who chaired, reiterated the need to extend the local manufacturing list and the need for local manufacturers to be GMP compliance. He suggested that the local industries be categorized and graded in the order of competence to promote competition, quality and efficiency.