Medicines For Malaria Venture & Africa Centres For Disease Control And Prevention Sign MoU

AKINSINDE TUNDE EMMANUEL

Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), focused on strengthening African manufacturing of malaria medicines on the margins of the 2^nd International Conference on Public Health in Africa (CPHIA 2022), taking place in Kigali, Rwanda.

The objective of the MoU is to jointly enhance supply security and facilitate equitable access to quality approved antimalarials and thereby maximize the use and health impact of existing products on the continent. Through the MoU, MMV and the Africa CDC have affirmed their commitment to join efforts to achieve a common objective: to strengthen Africa’s manufacturing capability to tackle diseases like malaria that continue to plague the African continent.

“MMV and Africa CDC share a common goal of delivering quality-assured essential medicines produced in Africa,” said Pierre Hugo, MMV’s Senior Director of Market Dynamics and Global Partnerships. “We believe that targeted investments and collaboration with select manufacturers will create opportunities to expand access to quality antimalarials throughout both the public and private sectors.”

The MoU further outlines how MMV and Africa CDC will work with partners to ensure funding and procurement of locally manufactured quality-assured medicines. This includes advocacy to AU Member States to implement free trade agreements to ensure regional distribution of locally manufactured, quality-assured medicines.

“Africa is capable of manufacturing its own medicines”, said Dr. Nicaise Ndembi, Africa CDC’s Senior Science Advisor. “The partnership between Africa CDC and MMV will increase local medicine manufacturing and focus on establishing several regional hubs to manufacture Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) and Finished Pharmaceutical Products (FPP).”

The collaboration will support African Union Member States and is aimed at accelerating and scaling-up African manufacturing, building on existing capacities and developing new ones to support the manufacture of quality-assured malaria APIs and FPPs. The potential benefits of such a collaboration were highlighted with the recent WHO prequalification of a sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, a medicine which protects pregnant women from malaria, by Kenya-based Universal Corporation Limited (UCL), supported by MMV.