Guyana working with HeDPAC to strengthen capacity of local pharmaceutical manufacturers

With the Guyana Government looking to expand the production of pharmaceuticals, efforts are progressing to build local capacity through a collaboration with the Health Development Partnership for Africa and the Caribbean (HeDPAC)– a platform between Africa and the Caribbean.
The government is currently working with HeDPAC to strengthen the New Medicine Regulation Bill that will bolster the standards of the country’s Food and Drug Department among other benefits.
During his visit to Guyana, HeDPAC’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr. Halie Getahun committed to examining the legislation in a bid to ensure it coincides with international best practices and regulations.
This intervention is part of efforts to put the necessary regulatory, legislative, and institutional frameworks in place to advance works on the production of medical drugs.
According to the Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony, HeDPAC’s expertise which is accumulated from their work with African and Caribbean nations will play a crucial role in helping Guyana to manufacture high-quality pharmaceuticals.
“So, we have also asked HeDPAC, the group that is here, to take a look at the legislation and make sure that it’s compliant with EU regulations, compliant with other jurisdictions that we want to export to. We are also working very closely with the European Union and earlier this year we had a team that went out to several European countries looking at the possibility of collaboration with universities in Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. So, we’ll be continuing this, and very soon you’ll see a lot of these partnerships coming to fruition,” Dr. Anthony.
These efforts were confirmed by HeDPAC’s CEO, Dr. Halie Getahun during an interview with the Guyana Times who stated that the expertise being provided to Guyana will play a crucial role in moving the country’s Food and Drug Department from a level three to four.
On this point, he explained that when completed, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will be able to produce medication for different types of populations.
“We identified potential areas where we can bring experience from other countries to Guyana to advance those areas where there needs some improvement. Like for example, Guyana is embarking on having a medicines bill where they will have established the Food and Drug Administration and it requires to go into what we call the WHO benchmarking. It’s a long process that gives authority to the country and for the ministry to regulate. And we have countries like Rwanda, for example, where they have very much advanced experience so we exchanged all those views with Minister Anthony,” the HeDPAC’s CEO said.
As it relates to pandemic preparedness, Dr. Getahun explained that the efforts of the Guyana Government in collaboration with the Governments of Barbados and Rwanda are instrumental and will aid in the region having access to vaccines.
He highlighted that the great inequality right now is not only the manufacturing of vaccines and the pricing but also the distribution, something he believes such a collaboration has the potential to address.
“Whenever you try to develop pharmaceuticals, it has to be an end-to-end process, which probably requires research and development from the capacity of developing clinical trials, and also really looking into the market and also the development of drugs and also expansion. So, there are certain areas which we have been in discussion, like developing clinical trials could be one area that can eventually also help further development in this. And I think creating also a very conducive economic environment for manufacturers could also be a good sign, which we have actually seen,” he added.
HeDPAC is a health development platform between the African and Caribbean Regions aimed at strengthening South-South partnerships to build institutional capacity within and between the regions to collectively address pressing health challenges.
Last year, the Health Minister had disclosed that both local and international Private Sector bodies have demonstrated significant interest in establishing a biomedical hub in the country to expand on the production of pharmaceuticals.
This year, President Dr. Irfaan Ali had made it clear that the government is serious about the establishment of a vaccine manufacturing facility in the country.