EAC BEGINS ON IMPLEMThe East African Community (EAC) Regional Centre of Excellence (EAC RCoE), in conjunction with the EAC Secretariat, has distributed 16 minilab kits to help accelerate regional efforts to eliminate counterfeit pharmaceuticals from the regional market.
Following an intense training of two staff members from each country, the Minilab equipment and accessories were given over in Kigali on August 18, 2023, to six EAC member nations including Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, South Sudan, and the United Republic of Tanzania.PROJECT ENTING MINILABS
The Minilab project is a collaboration between the University of Rwanda and the East Africa Community Regional Centre of Excellence for Vaccines, Immunization, and Health Supply Chain Management (UR/EAC RCE-VIHSCM) as well as the EAC Secretariat.
The initiative obtained a significant grant of €400,000 from the Federal Government of Germany, the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), to be implemented through 2026 through the German Development Bank (KfW).
Minilab technology, developed in Germany, is a portable and relatively low-cost equipment for screening the quality of medications in resource-constrained environments. It aids in the rapid assessment and detection of counterfeit and substandard medications anywhere, at any time, without the need for a laboratory.
“They will share the screening results with the EAC RCE-VIHSCM every quarter, which will analyze the data and pass information/evidence to the EAC Partner States to act on offending substandard and falsified medicines (SFM),” said Françoise Kayitare Tengera, the university of Rwanda’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Finance.
According to the most recent United Nations transnational organized crime threat assessment, up to 169,271 deaths are due to false and substandard antibiotics used to treat severe pneumonia in children, and 267,000 deaths each year are linked to fake and substandard antimalarial drugs.
“This will help plug seepage through our porous SFM borders while also hastening the sharing of life-saving information across our borders,” Kayitare explained.
She added that the long-term strategic aim is to establish a robust EAC Pharmacovigilance and Post-Market Surveillance (PMS) Observatory, as well as to establish the EAC Pooled Procurement Mechanism, for which the EAC RCE-VIHSCM has already received €2 million in catalytic financing.
Dr. Eric Nzeyimana, EAC Principal Health Officer, stated that in order for this initiative to succeed, engagement with partner states is required, particularly with the construction of centers of excellence.
“The minilabs will make a significant difference in the way we control our products, which will, of course, result in better access to quality medicines and medical products,” Nzeyimana added.
The EAC RCE-VIHSCM is directing the project’s execution, assuring coordination, training, and knowledge transfer among the beneficiary institutions in close partnership with Tübingen University in Germany and Muhimbili University of Allied Sciences (MUHAS).
At the handover event, 12 FDA and NMRA professionals from the EAC were presented with certificates of merit and will serve as trainers of trainees (ToT) in their respective countries where minilab technology is available but in tiny numbers compared to the need.
Dr. Raymond Muganga, Division Manager of Quality Control Laboratory at the Rwanda Food and Drugs Authority, stated that their personnel has been undertaking visual inspection, but minilabs as a secondary stage of checking pharmaceutical standards will boost their efficiency in assessing health items.
Dr. Stephen Karengera, Director of EAC RCE-VIHSCM, stated that the region’s future aim is to provide additional equipment to reach more communities, particularly at the health center level, in order to lower the region’s existing 25% counterfeit medications on the market.