NATIONAL Pharmaceutical Company (NatPharm) will handle the transactions related to the importation of drugs along with active pharmaceutical ingredients.
By Kudakwashe Pembere
This is in line with the Health and Child Care Ministry’s vision to equip all the public hospitals. Health and Child Care Minister Dr Obadiah Moyo said this last week while officiating the annual Zimbabwe Medical Association scientific congress.
The control of the forex, the financing is also going to be centralized with NatPharm playing a major role. They are the ones who will get the products, the active ingredients, all the other the drugs coming from outside.They will pay for any medication. They are the ones who are going to control,” the Minister said.
The Health Minister also said he wants to recapacitate the local pharmaceutical manufacturers through sourcing active ingredients in China.
“At the same time we also want to empower the local pharmaceutical manufacturers. And the way we have realised is that the Indians themselves are buying active pharmaceutical ingredients are already ready from China. So we are also going to China.
“I already have a delegation who arrived last week and they are willing to give us the active pharmaceutical ingredients which we will utilize in our factories such as Datlabs, Caps, and Plus Five and so forth so that we are fully sufficient,” Dr Moyo said adding that he inherited a system where there were literally no stocks available in the country’s public pharmacies.
Dr Moyo is on record of his intentions to fully stock the country’s hospitals and clinics with medicines.
“So we are going to fill up from the clinic level, district level, provincial level, central hospital level, fill up the warehouses at NatPharm and then the retailers will say Zimbabwe is now fully sufficient. Once we are able to say that then we will start exporting,” the Health Minister said.
Dr Moyo is convinced that NatPharm board chair Dr Billy Rigava’s notion of bonded warehouses works. The Minister said four international companies have set up the structures.
“We are working on a system whereby we will have bonded warehouses in Zimbabwe. Eighty percent of our medicines come from India. We are already in discussion with some companies who are willing to set up bonded warehouses in Zimbabwe. Already four have come.
“They have identified the warehouses, they have set up the warehouses and those warehouses are going to be fully stocked. This will enable us to buy immediately ex-stock not to wait for product to come from India but the product will be here available in Zimbabwe and immediately available for use. We won’t have to wait for eight weeks,” he said.
Pharmaceutical Society of Zimbabwe Mr Portipha Mwendera noted that capacitation of local manufacturers could help lower prices of medicines.
