The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many health emergency challenges across the globe and has shown that global health security is built on robust, local health security foundations. The recent vaccination challenges have also raised additional concerns, and opportunities in African’s pharmaceutical sector in terms of access to medical /health products, supply chain and logistics, manufacturing, movement and management across the continent. The ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is worsening the situation by highlighting the challenges posed by the pre-existing interdependencies on international supply chains. Supply chain and logistics have been disrupted by COVID-19 thus, the need for concerted efforts and a holistic/multisectoral approach when addressing these issues at regional and continental level.
Many countries in Africa possess underutilized capacity to produce quality-assured essential pharmaceutical products locally. However, insufficient use of existing human resource and knowledge are hindering efforts to make use of local capacity in human, technological, financial, and infrastructure systems. Scaling up African pharmaceutical capacity will help provide sustainable access to quality medical products and support the continents long-term development goals under the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
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