The 2024 Industry Engagement Forum began today in Lagos, Nigeria, amid Africa’s escalating healthcare crisis and the critical need for long-term solutions.
The three-day conference, titled “Unlocking Healthcare Value Chains and Driving Investment through Partnerships: Accelerating Equitable Access to Quality-Assured Sustainable Health Products,” brought together 300 participants to facilitate investment opportunities as interventions to expand local pharmaceutical manufacturing.
The forum, organised by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the global health organisation Unitaid, in collaboration with Nigeria’s presidential initiative on Unlocking Healthcare Value Chains (PVAC), seeks to organise transformative partnerships and investments to strengthen local pharmaceutical manufacturing and ensure equitable access to essential health products.
Africa faces 25% of the global disease burden, but more than 95% of active pharmaceutical components and 70% of medications consumed on the continent are imported, making states vulnerable to supply chain interruptions and price changes. Recognising the need to resolve this dependency, stakeholders are supporting this project to enhance regional manufacturing capacity.
Adopting a strategic strategy to bring diagnostics, therapies, and medical equipment to Africa through bolstering domestic production will improve health security, expand long-term access to reasonably priced healthcare, and offer customised solutions for local requirements.
“It is no longer an option to industrialise the health care sector. It is imperative and a necessity for future stability and growth,” the PVAC National Coordinator, Dr. Abdu Mukhtar, said.
Also, the IFC Regional Director for Central Africa, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, Dahlia Khalifa, said that Africa’s high dependency on imported pharmaceuticals and vaccines (50% to 70% or more) puts it at risk, as recent international supply chain disruptions during the COVID pandemic highlighted.
“IFC is co-hosting this event in Africa to state our commitment to strengthening local manufacturing value chains and creating resilient health ecosystems. Nigeria’s strong pharma-manufacturing sector and regulatory reforms for universal health care make it a significant choice for this event,” he said.
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