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Namibia launched Monday a revised National Medicines Policy (NMP) to guide and develop pharmaceutical services in the country to meet the requirements of locals in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases.
Speaking at the launch, Minister of Health and Social Services Kalumbi Shangula said there was a need to revise the NMP to be more responsive to emerging health needs within communities and to align objectives and strategies of the policy with current national strategic development plans.
Shangula said Namibia is looking to strengthen pharmaceutical regulatory capacity, improve procurement practices of health products as well as improve warehousing and distribution capacity of the central and regional medical stores while ensuring supply chain integrity and improving interoperability of health information and pharmaceutical inventory management tools across the supply chain and beyond.
He said the policy document, which guides all strategic and operational level activities for the pharmaceutical sector, has 11 strategic objectives, each with several strategies that are recommended to be employed to facilitate the implementation of the policy.
Since the first edition of the NMP was launched, Shangula said, the Ministry of Health and Social Services has made tremendous progress over the past 24 years in the provision of pharmaceutical services to all Namibians, both in the public and private sectors.
