People across the African continent eagerly await the launch of the African Medicines Agency, or AMA — an African Union regulatory health body tasked with the lofty goal of harmonizing regulatory processes across the continent.
It’s an institution that is direly needed. Regulatory systems across the African continent are disjointed. That creates challenges for African pharmaceutical manufacturers that must register their products individually in each country rather than access the entire continent’s population through approvals at one Pan-African agency. The continent also struggles with substandard and falsified drugs, which need regulatory oversight to effectively weed out.
And while the remit of AMA is massive and there’s a long road ahead, the work toward regulatory harmonization is ongoing in the lead up to the agency’s official launch, Chimwemwe Chamdimba told Devex on the sidelines of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention conference this week in Zambia. She heads the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization program at the AU Development Agency.