PMA/AFRICARE PROJECT IN SIERRA LEONE SET FOR JANUARY START WITH FUNDING OF $320,000 PROVIDED BY MEMBER FIRMS, ASSN. VP KINGHAM NOTES
Executive Summary
PMA/Africare's drug management/distribution project in Sierra Leone is scheduled to get underway in January with funding of about $320,000 provided by 13 assn. member firms, PMA VP-International Jay Kingham said Nov. 5 at a press briefing. Africare "has just completed a feasibility study for a project in Sierra Leone. That feasibility study was favorable, and the project, slightly delayed, is now expected to begin in January. Thirteen member companies have agreed to provide the $320,000 that this program will cost," Kingham noted. Kingham noted that the Sierra Leone project will be based on the model of PMA/Africare's first collaborative program which was completed earlier this year in The Gambia, a neighboring West African state. That 21-month project, Kingham said, demonstrated "not only in our view, but in the view of WHO [World Health Organization], that a more efficient drug development delivery structure can improve health care with no increase in continuing cost to the country," The Gambia project was also funded by PMA members at just under $300,000. Kingham said that "WHO is planning a workshop in The Gambia early next year in which other African govt. drug officials would be invited in to look at The Gambia program which we did with Africare as an example of how it can be done." The assn. expects that successful demonstration projects can lead internatl. funding sources like the World Bank to back similar long-term programs in other developing countries. PMA's assistance activities for developing countries are part of the assn.'s attempt to establish that "the real pharmaceutical problems in developing countries have much less to do with alleged marketing abuses than they do with an inadequate infrastructure for delivering drugs in those countries."