EPN - Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network

How can we achieve changes that lead to lasting practices in rational use of medicines?
Write a real story of what or how you see irrational drug use happening in your institution/organization/country and suggest a practical and achievable mechanism/method that could be used to effect a lasting change to lead to rational use of medicines.

A three-day meeting was held in Blantyre, Malawi (13th–15th March 2006) in order to return the results of the maximizing access to essential medicines baseline study (carried out by EPN in May 2005) and to look at ways forward.

Executive summary of baseline survey research in Ghana

Research for the ‘EPN guidelines’ baseline survey was carried out in Ghana in August–October 2005. This report of results provides the baseline for compliance with the ‘EPN guidelines’ in Ghana, and respondents represent over 2,545 beds and 694,500 outpatients. It is a statistically sound report for Catholic health services in the southern and central regions of Ghana (only 8% of respondents are from northern facilities).

Executive summary of baseline survey research in Malawi

In Malawi, in May 2005, researchers from five countries were trained in the use of the baseline survey tools for the EPN Access to Medicines project (in order to carry out work in Cameroon, Ghana, Malawi, Togo, and Tanzania), and undertook fieldwork to complete the baseline survey for Malawi.

Activities for Phase 1 of the EPN Access to Essential Medicines project are:

• To support the development of the project and draw up and prioritize a list of guidelines and indicators for those guidelines to be used in the project.
• To carry out a baseline survey of existing compliance with the EPN guidelines, initially in six countries, Malawi, Ghana, Uganda, Togo, Cameroon, and Tanzania (see below for the survey tools) .
• To present results to members and partners in-country and to a wider audience.

The EPN Access to Essential Medicines guidelines do not address issues beyond the control of church health services (CHSs), such as foreign exchange rates, storage outside the CHS system, patient poverty, number of pharmaceutical staff (for example, pharmacists available), and patient information from other sources (for example, advertising). Nor do the guidelines address issues that are beyond the remit of EPN to assist CHSs, such as access to transport, construction of stores, the CHS system in its entirety, the expansion of CHSs to serve larger populations, and the health service of a country in general. These areas are recognized as being important but are nonetheless beyond the remit of this particular project.

It is estimated that church health services provide at least 50% of health services in Africa. However, their response to the opportunities provided by ARVs/ARTs has been slow or negligible. The apparent inability of the churches, both as community leaders through their priests, pastors, and congregations and as managers and owners of church health services, to take their full part in the response to ARVs/ARTs is hindering the positive impacts of these new treatments.