Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El Sisi attended on Sunday a dialogue session under the theme of “Towards flexible and sustainable health systems in Africa”.
The session is part of the 1st Africa Health ExCon, the biggest medical exhibition and conference on the continent, that kicked off earlier in the day at Al Manara International Conference Center in New Cairo.
The session is run by Higher Education Minister and acting health minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar.
Head of the Egyptian Drug Authority Tamer Mohamed Essam, acting director of Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Ahmed Ogwell Ouma and WHO Assistant Director-General for Drug Access, Vaccines and Pharmaceuticals Mariangela Simao are taking part in the session.
Mariangela Simao, WHO Assistant Director-General for Drug Access, Vaccines and Pharmaceuticals, praised the pioneering efforts exerted by Egypt in the manufacturing of vaccines and drugs.
Together with five other African countries, Egypt can transfer vaccine industry technologies to other countries, she added.
The coronavirus pandemic showed the need of diversifying health capabilities of countries, she said.
Ahmed Ouma, Deputy Director at the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said the coronavirus pandemic taught us two lessons that whenever there is a big problem worldwide Africa stands alone and that when Africans join hands good things happen.
In 2020, heads of state, including President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, met to discuss ways of fighting the pandemic and it became clear the need to enhance African bodies at continental level, he said.
He underlined the importance of enhancing partnerships between the public and private sectors operating in the health sector.
On his part, Head of the Egyptian Drug Authority Tamer Mohamed Essam said Egypt is among the countries that have excellent reputation in the pharmaceutical industry like China and India, hailing the presidential initiative “100 million healthy lives” that succeeded in treating around 2.2 million people.
He added that presidential directives to localize the manufacture of Hepatitis C drugs in Egypt contributed to reducing the treatment course’s price to 50 US dollars per capita.
Essam stated that Egypt consumed 230 million locally-made packages of Hepatitis C drugs during the coronavirus pandemic, noting that the cost of these medicines was EGP 6.7 billion .
Egypt managed to export 44 million packages of coronavirus treatment protocol to 77 countries, including 25 African ones, at a total value of USD 114 million, he said.
Essam concluded that the Egyptian pharmaceutical sector made significant progress in the global pharmaceutical market, citing that the sales of Egyptian medicines reached EGP 62 billion in 2015-2016 and hit EGP 149 billion in 2020-2021.
Head of the Egyptian Drug Authority Tamer Mohamed Essam went on to say that Egypt has now three production lines for manufacturing antibiotics, which helped the country achieve self-sufficiency for this vital industry by 79% ad secure more than USD 70 million annually.
Essam said Egypt made progress in manufacturing single-dose eye drops, noting that the country has now four of the largest production lines in the Middle East for this pharmaceutical product, by a self-sufficiency rate of 95%.
He asserted that strengthening partnership with the private sector in the pharmaceutical sector contributed to increasing the number of factories in the country to reach 170 and the number of high-quality production lines to hit 700 in 2021-2022.
For his part, Pharmexcil Director General Ravi Bhaskar stressed the importance of coordination between governments and pharmaceutical companies to serve
the health system.
Bhaskar said that India now exports medicines worth over USD 50 billion, attributing this success to the Indian government’s support for the pharmaceutical sector.
He stated that the Indian government provided incentives for pharmaceutical companies to manufacture a coronavirus vaccine in a short time.
