I am delighted to welcome you all to one of the most beautiful cities in Viet Nam – Da Nang, surrounded by 3 UNESCO World Heritage sites, the national capital of Nguyen Dynasty until 1945 (Hue), Ancient port city of merchants (Hoi An) and the religious and political capital of the Champa Kingdom between 4th to 13th century (My Son Sanctuary), all within 100km of the city. I would also like to welcome you to the 9th International Meeting of World Pharmacopoeias, where “collaboration” is the key to the success of this meeting year after year.
This year, the world will celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the World Health Organization as well as the 40th Anniversary of the Alma-Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care placing a spotlight on universal health coverage (UHC). UHC means ALL people can access the quality health services they need without financial hardship. UHC is also the overarching target of Sustainable Development Goal 3 - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. More specifically, SDG 3 Target 3.8 aims to achieve UHC including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.
Currently, at least half of the world’s population still lacks access to essential health services and essential medicines and vaccines. To achieve UHC by 2030, at least 1 billion more people will need to have access to essential health services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines in the next 5 years. This is an ambitious goal led by the new WHO Director-General Dr Tedros. The WHO member states will endorse this goal at 71st World Health Assembly in next month, May 2018.
Universal access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines can only happen when medicines are manufactured, stored and distributed according to quality standards that underpin the assurance that they are acceptably safe and efficacious before they become available on the market.
In many parts of the world this is unfortunately not the case where substandard and falsified medicines continue to affect the most vulnerable communities. Let me quote a statement of Dr Tedros made at the launch of a Report on the WHO global surveillance and monitoring system for substandard and falsified medical products (the GSMS report) which highlights the cause, consequence and solutions in November of last year.
Imagine a mother who gives up food or other basic needs to pay for her child’s treatment, unaware that the medicines are substandard or falsified, and then that treatment causes her child to die
Dr Tedros Adhanom, WHO Director-General
The figures are staggering!
- 1 in 10 medical products in circulation in low and middle-income countries are falsified
- Up to 169,000 children could die from pneumonia, and 116,000 more people could die from malaria in sub Saharan Africa due to substandard and falsified antibiotics
Colleagues and friends
The role of pharmacopoeias is critical to ensure quality standard of essential medicines. We have come here to discuss how we can best work together, to implement the good pharmacopoeial practices (GPhP) with the ultimate aim to work towards harmonization of standards and to speed up detection to help tackle this “global” problem.
Yes, we have come a long way in our harmonization efforts, but our work is not done. We need to continue to strengthen our collaboration, to minimize duplication of work, to leverage our resources and knowledge so we can keep up with the advancements in science in the most “cost-effective” way. In doing so, we can make sure that affordable, safe and quality medicines are available to citizens of our countries and the world.
I hope you will engage in fruitful debates and discussions to make this meeting productive and relevant.
- Continuing the dialogue on harmonizing pharmacopoeia practices
- Talking about the Project on Exchange of Experiences and Knowledge among National, Regional and International to understand the challenges each pharmacopoeia is facing and identify opportunities for joint initiatives
- Discussing various models of collaboration and what is the most practical way for moving forward
- Discussing what future priorities are to be addressed by the pharmacopoeias around the world
In concluding, I would like to thank the National Institute of Drug Quality Control of Viet Nam for hosting this meeting. And, I apologise that I will not be able to join you at dinner tonight. I hope you can all relax with a “Bia Hoi”, enjoy delicious Vietnamese food and seize the opportunity to get to know each other even better.
I would like to end with this quote from Helen Keller –
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much"
-Helen Keller
Let’s work together to increase access to quality and affordable medicines “for all”.
Thank you.