EPN - Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network

The EPN Administrator and Networking programme officer will represent the Network at the upcoming World Health Organization's Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property when it holds its second session on 5th-10th November 2007 in Geneva.

The main agenda for the meeting is to finalize a draft strategy and action plan on how to boost affordable drug discovery, development and delivery for diseases, mainly those affecting the poor. If completed, the draft will go before WHO¹s Executive Board meeting in January 2008 and, potentially, to the World Health Assembly for endorsement four months later.

Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network (EPN) in collaboration with Health Action International (HAI) - Africa will host a pan African Expert meeting on Access to and Rational Use of Essential Medicines. The meeting will be held at La Mada Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya from 14th to 16th November 2007. The theme of the meeting is: “Saving lives and saving money; Making Access to and Rational Use of Medicines a Priority”.

View the concept paper: Access to and rational use of essential medicines. [PDF. 70Kb]

EPN members in India, Christian Medical Association of India (CMAI), Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore and Interchurch Service Association (ICSA) will work together to host a Members' day in Chennai, India. The purpose of the meeting will be to meet with a group of pharmacists in India to mainly introduce them to the Network, invite them to join the Network and see how they can work with the members.

The next EPN board meeting will be held from 17th – 18th October 2007 in Chennai, India. As 2007 nears its end, the meeting will mainly review the accomplishments, lessons learnt and challenges encountered in 2007 and ways forward in 2008. Among the key things to be discussed for 2008 is the EPN Forum scheduled for Cameroon in May.

EPN board members - Albert Petersen and Jane Masiga and the EPN coordinator Eva Ombaka, will visit Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited in Gurgaon, India. The purpose of the visit will be to discuss how to shorten times between new drugs developed and having them in the clinics, to learn various views on the TRIPS issue; especially the question on how to export new developed generics from India to Africa under the existing Indian patent law and the future of second and third line ARVs.

The purpose of this workshop is to build capacity on how to develop a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) at the Drug Supply Organizations (DSO) and Church Health Institutions (CHI) which leads to efficient procurement and distribution operations.

The participants will represent Joint Medical Stores (JMS) - Uganda, Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies (MEDS) - Kenya, Christian Health Association of Malawi (CHAM) - Malawi and, Mission for Essential Medicine and Supplies(MEMS) - Tanzania.

After the meeting the participants are not only expected to develop  plans and action points that can be implemented in their organizations but also to develop a draft training plan to involve the DSOs and CHIs in their networks in developing their SOPs.