IFPMA Welcomes World Health Day Call To Build Strong Healthcare Workforces, Especially In Developing Countries

Main Category: Public Health
Also Included In: Pharma Industry / Biotech Industry
Article Date: 07 Apr 2006 - 0:00 PST

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The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) welcomes the World Health Organization's decision to base this year's World Health Day on the theme "Working together for health", with an emphasis on the importance of a strong healthcare workforce for achieving improved global health.

Dr. Harvey E. Bale, Director-General of the IFPMA, said: "Capacity building, to boost both the number of healthcare workers in underdeveloped countries and their professional competence, is an essential prerequisite for improving health outcomes in these populations, which carry the heaviest disease burdens. Pharmaceutical companies' experience with their own programs to improve access to medicines in poor countries has confirmed that inadequate local healthcare workforces constitute perhaps the biggest single obstacle to achieving the health improvement targets in the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals."

"Looking at HIV/AIDS, which has been the pandemic targeted most by the WHO," Dr. Bale continued, "the countries most severely affected are those with the greatest need for strengthened healthcare professional capacity. In developing countries, effective management of this disease requires many more well-trained professionals to ensure adequate diagnosis, treatment and follow up. The WHO has set training and education as its first priority for strengthening the global health workforce. Pharmaceutical companies share this perception of the importance of training; indeed, many of the industry supported HIV/AIDS programs incorporate a training component 1 ."

1 Pharmaceutical company-supported HIV/AIDS programs in developing countries with a training component include:

Abbott Tanzania Care - To build this country's AIDS response/management system, more than 400 medical professionals are being trained. Tanzania Care will cover multiple hospitals and laboratories in Tanzania; increase training of medical workers and laboratory personnel; and expand access to voluntary counseling and testing for HIV. (tanzaniacare.org)

African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnership (ACHAP) Merck* and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are helping to improve prevention, health care access, patient management and treatment of HIV in Botswana. A didactic training course for all health care professionals in Botswana is enhancing their knowledge in HIV/AIDS clinical care, while more than 1,100 health care workers have received hands-on, clinic-based training from HIV/AIDS experts through the partnership's clinical preceptorship program. (achap.org)

Cambodia Treatment Access Project - Supported by Roche, this aims to increase access to HIV care, conduct research and train health-care professionals in Cambodia. (roche-hiv.com/Newsandfeatures/newsdet.cfm?hnid=276)

Diflucan Partnership Program - Pfizer provides its antifungal medicine, Diflucan®, to people living with two AIDS-related opportunistic infections. With the help of another program partner, the International Association for Physicians in AIDS Care (IAPAC), more than 20,000 health care providers have been trained in the countries participating in the program.
(diflucanpartnership.org)

Enhancing Care Initiative (ECI) - Supported by the Merck* Company Foundation, ECI identifies pragmatic, country-led approaches to provide HIV/AIDS care specific to each country's needs and resources, including provision of education and training in Brazil, Senegal, South Africa and Thailand. (eci.harvard.edu)

Positive Action on HIV/AIDS - GlaxoSmithKline's international program of HIV education, care and community support focuses support on capacity building programs, emphasizing education, care and treatment, to facilitate delivery of more effective and sustainable healthcare services,. (gsk.com/positiveaction)

Infectious Diseases Institute - In recognition of the growing need of African health care professionals for training in the latest treatment options for HIV/AIDS, Pfizer and the Pfizer Foundation have helped the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa to establish the new Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) in Uganda Since its establishment in 2002, the IDI has trained more than 250 doctors in HIV/AIDS care. (aaacp.org)

SHARE, supported by Abbott and Pfizer, is a multi-national program that designed to share the latest findings in HIV/AIDS research with doctors, healthcare workers, resource planners and public health experts. Viramune® Donation Program. As well as donating HIV/AIDS medicine, Boehringer Ingelheim works with governments and private organizations to develop training programs, locally and internationally. (viramune-donation-program.org)

Note: Merck* refers to Merck & Co., Inc., Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA

About the IFPMA

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations is the global non-profit NGO directly representing twenty-six research-based pharmaceutical, biotech and vaccine companies and sixty national industry associations in developed and developing countries. The industry's R&D pipeline contains hundreds of new medicines and vaccines being developed to address global disease threats, including cancer, heart disease, HIV/AIDS and malaria. The IFPMA Clinical Trials Portal and the IFPMA Health Partnerships Survey help make the industry's activities more transparent. The IFPMA strengthens patient safety by improving risk assessment of medicines and combating their counterfeiting. It also provides the secretariat for the International Conference on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH).

IFPMA
ifpma.org

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