16 Nov 2015

Minister of Health, Ms Dorcas Makgato has called for regional cooperation in the area of pooled procurement of medicines to cuts costs.

Officially opening the Southern African Development Committee (SADC) ministers of health meeting in Kasane, Ms Makgato noted that through information sharing of medicine prices and sources, some countries had managed to reduce costs significantly.

“We need to strengthen the platforms for our experts to share information and we need to concretise joint negotiation through group contracting to benefit from economies of scale and leverage from member states that had expertise in negotiation,” she explained.

Since the region was heavily dependent on imported medicines, she called for the health sector to align their interests to the SADC  industrialisation agenda, which is currently top priority for the region.

“We know that medicine constitutes a high percentage of our expenses in health, we therefore need to push for regional production of medicines and health commodities in the region,” she said. Cross-border activities and referral systems, she said also need to be actualised and strengthened.

Ms Makgato also emphasised the need to show returns on investment and called for the secretariat to be empowered in order to monitor the implementation of their commitments.
“We have been meeting for several years and agreeing on a number of commitments, we must demonstrate the results of our investment if we are to continue justifying our activities to our stakeholders,” she added.

With less than 50 days to go before the shift from Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Ms Makgato noted that significant progress had been made in combating communicable diseases especially HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Ends