Your Excellency President Faure Gnassingbé,
Your Excellency President Macky Sall,
Your Excellency President Yoweri Museveni,
Your Excellency Prime Minister Komi Sélom Klassou of Togo,
Your Excellency former President Banda of Malawi,
Your Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent,
Mr Jean-Yves Ollivier, President of the Brazzaville Foundation,
Your Excellencies the former Prime Ministers of Uganda and Guinea,
Your excellencies, ministers, distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends,
Bonjour!
First of all I would like to you, Your Excellency, President Gnassingbé, for your hospitality in hosting this important event, and for your leadership in addressing the scourge of substandard and falsified medicines.
I would also like to use this opportunity to thank the Brazzaville Foundation and the Presidents of the other countries for being here with us to sign this historic agreement.
You are all painfully aware of the scale of this problem.
More than 1 in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries is either substandard or falsified.
Last year alone, WHO issued 11 alerts globally.
These included falsified cholera vaccine in Bangladesh;
And a leukemia drug circulating in Europe and the Americas that contained simply paracetamol;
While this threat is global, Africa bears the heaviest burden.
Since 2012, WHO has issued 35 alerts of substandard and falsified products. Over two-thirds of these alerts have been issued in Africa.
Unethical and criminal operators see Africa as a dumping ground for these medicines.
In 2012, Angolan customs officials, by chance, seized 33 million doses of falsified first-line malaria medicines hidden in loud speakers on a cargo ship.
And last year, a drug marketed for treating high blood pressure in Cameroon contained the wrong active ingredient, and instead was a medicine for diabetes, which caused some patients who took it to suffer from hypoglycemia.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
At best, these medicines fail to treat or prevent disease, wasting precious resources and exploiting the hopes and fears of vulnerable people.
At worst, they kill, and fan the flames of drug resistance, putting all of us at risk.
Some models estimate that more than 280,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa die every year as a result of using falsified or substandard medicines for pneumonia or malaria.
Anti-malarials and antibiotics are among the most commonly falsified medicines, but all classes and categories are affected.
There are several reasons for this problem.
Lack of access to affordable medicines forces desperate people to buy medicines from unreliable sources.
Lack of good governance allows corruption to penetrate health systems and leaves loopholes for criminal groups to exploit.
Lack of technical capacity undermines the integrity of supply chains and limits the ability of countries to safeguard the health of their people.
These are some of the problems: lack of access to affordable medicines, lack of good governance and lack of technical capacity.
WHO has been working to combat substandard and falsified medicines for many years. We have come a long way.
Together with our Member States, we have developed a comprehensive strategy to prevent, detect and respond to substandard and falsified medical products.
This strategy includes 12 actions, from education to border control, from supply chain integrity to transparent legal processes.
The Lomé Initiative is a very important corollary to this strategy.
For the first time, African leaders are putting falsified and substandard medicines on the highest political agenda. Thank you to the leaders present here for this political commitment.
Your commitment sends a clear message that African leaders will fight falsified and substandard medicines aggressively and urgently.
We appreciate the emphasis in the Lomé Declaration on criminalizing the trafficking of falsified medicines.
This is an important element of our fight. Two of the 12 actions in WHO’s strategy relate to tightening legal frameworks to fight the criminals who traffic in it.
Strengthening the legal response to substandard and falsified medicines is important, but we must also do more.
Even as we work to cut off the supply of these medicines, we must address the demand, ensuring people have access to medicines they can trust.
Substandard and falsified medical products only exist because access to quality, affordable medicines does not.
Our biggest challenge is ensuring people have access to high-quality, affordable medicines.
When we achieve that, we remove the market opportunity for substandard and falsified medicines.
One of the biggest obstacles to improving access to medical products in Africa is the lack of strong national regulatory systems.
To address that, all African Union countries signed a treaty at the AU Summit last year to create an African Medicines Agency.
In an increasingly globalized world, no one country has sufficient resources and capacity to effectively regulate the whole supply chain for health products.
This continental approach is not a new idea. For 25 years, the European Medicines Agency has ensured quality, safe and effective medicines to a market of 500 million people.
If Europe can do it, so can Africa.
I call on all countries in our continent to ratify the treaty with the utmost urgency. I know that the treaty will support the Lomé Initiative.
We need 15 countries to ratify the treaty for it to become operational.
For our part, WHO is committed to working with you and to make this Lomé Initiative a success.
Substandard and falsified medical products are a shared problem. We must work together on shared solutions.
With strong regulation and political commitment, we can ensure all our brothers and sisters in Africa have access to the medicines they deserve.
The prize we are working for is not just fewer bad medicines on pharmacy shelves.
The prize we are working for is a healthier Africa.
A safer Africa.
A more prosperous Africa.
I am glad to be home again, and thank you for your hospitality Your Excellency.
I thank you. Merci beaucoup.