Réseau Pharmaceutique Œcuménique (EPN)

According to EPN's membership guidelines, a partner is an organization, agency or association that provides financial or technical support or undertakes collaborative activities with the Network, or is an umbrella organization of which the Network is a member. EPN's partners include:

As part of implementing the action plan developed in the feedback meeting at the conclusion of the EPN/WHO DSO study, a workshop to develop Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) tools for DSOs was held in Kampala, Uganda from 17th - 19th July 2006. Participants at the activity were representatives from DSOs and Christian Health Associations (CHAs) involved in drug management from Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia.

By learning how to design survey questions, the participants developed a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) tool which is being piloted tested in Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania. To develop the tool, the participants were placed into three working groups, with each group required to evaluate the questions in particular sections of the questionnaire for the DSO.

Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network in collaboration with Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies (MEDS), Sustainable Healthcare Foundation (SHEF), and Health Action International (HAI) Africa re-launched the Practical Pharmacy newsletter in October 2006. The newsletter which was first published in 1996 was created to provide appropriate and practical information on drug supply and management for health workers, particularly those with no specific training in pharmacy. Its production however ceased in 2000 after fifteen issues.

The first editions of Practical Pharmacy laid a solid foundation, beginning from basic essential skills for medicine management in a health centre setting (storing medicines, stock control, etc) and moving on to patient-centred topics (rational prescribing, medicines in pregnancy and the elderly, etc).

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.

Coordinator’s experience:

This is a summary of the coordinator's experience on the sessions attended on 10th August.

This was the first day of the Ecumenical pre-IADS conference. There were over 500 people in the main hall (ball room). The theme of the conference is “Keep the promise” and this was well kicked off by a powerful opening worship in which stones were used to state our promises. This continued into the closing ceremony when pots were broken to symbolize broken promises and where we threw stones into the pots, breaking them even further, while remembering broken promised make to those who have died or are suffering form HIV/AIDS. Terry Macarthur and the worship team once again did a fantastic job!

http://www.worldbank.org/oed/ecd/tools/

Jane Masiga, a member of EPN's board gave a report of her experience in Toronto:

Background

XVI International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2006) which was organised by the International AIDS Society (IAS) and the AIDS 2006 Toronto Local Hosts was held at the Metro Toronto Conventional Centre in Toronto, Canada between 13th and 18th August 2006. The week marked the 25th anniversary of the first reported case of HIV/AIDS. The conference was expected to be the most important global gathering in the fight against the spread of AIDS, as well as a unique opportunity for science, community, government and leadership from around the world to advance the response to the epidemic. It was a forum where timely and important data on the leading HIV/AIDS issues were presented and allowed for sharing of lessons learned among developing and developed countries. This would assist in bringing and supporting effective treatment and prevention programmes to communities around the world.  World-wide, an estimated 38.6 million people are living with HIV/AIDS.

The XVI International AIDS conference was held in Toronto Canada from 13th -18th August 2006. EPN was represented at the conference by the coordinator and a board member.

The coordinator participated in the Ecumenical pre-conference from 10th – 12th as part coordinator for one of the streams and on Monday 14th she was part of a team organized by Bread for the World (BfdW) that ran a skills building workshop on treatment literacy.

Jane Masiga an EPN board member,  also participated in the main conference and presented a paper on Challenges of Scale-up and Local Distribution in the session: “Supplying a Lifeline: Delivering Quality, Affordable Medicines and Supplies to People Living with and Affected by HIV/AIDS.”

Click on the links below to view summaries of their experiences.