Morocco remains committed to the development of the medicine and pharmacy sector across the African continent, said Friday in Marrakech, the Minister of Health and Social Protection, Khalid Ait Taleb.
In a speech read on his behalf, by the director of the Directorate of Medicines and Pharmacy at the Ministry of Health, Aziz Mrabti, at the opening of the work of the Health-Africa meeting “Pharma Africa Meeting” organized on the sidelines of the 20 edition of the Officine Expo, the Minister welcomed this opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to the development of the pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical sector on the scale of the African continent.
Recalling that this meeting is being held a few months before the 1st African Conference on Health Risk Reduction, where the principle of the indivisibility of national health security and sovereignty and those of the Continent was affirmed, the Minister affirmed that Morocco “is also and always committed to making cooperation with Africa a strategic choice”.
“Our country will ensure that it strengthens and promotes its multilateral relations with African countries, in order to establish a true partnership that constitutes the foundation stone for solidarity and for mutual benefit, within the framework of South-South cooperation which opens up promising prospects for sustainable development,” he said.
In this sense, Ait Taleb, noted that the Kingdom, aware of the challenges faced by the regulatory systems for the registration of products in Africa and the extreme interest in setting up an effective regional harmonization system of the drug registration process, expresses its commitment to share this regional collaborative approach, the objective of which is to improve the health of populations by increasing access to good quality, safe and effective medical products.
He took this opportunity to recall that Morocco is committed, following royal guidelines, to a major societal project through a development plan aimed at meeting the expectations of the population in terms of social services, while as part of the ultimate objective of the Moroccan Nation to honor its commitment to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
“This has given rise to the opening of major reform projects, including that relating to the extension of medical coverage”, he noted, indicating that the Kingdom is on the way to succeeding in this major reform in all its dimensions through the generalization of the Compulsory Health Insurance (AMO) scheme, which was reached at the end of 2022 and which affects the entire Moroccan population, including the most vulnerable.
In this context, Ait Taleb noted that his Department has embarked on an overhaul of the national health system based on four guiding principles represented by the adoption of good governance, through the creation of the High Authority of Health, the Moroccan Agency for Medicines and Health Products, the Territorial Health Groups, as well as the Moroccan Agency for Blood and its Derivatives; development of human resources; the development of the healthcare offer; and the digitization of the health system.
And to add that the ministry, aware of the fundamental importance of drug sovereignty, particularly in the area of Covid-19, has invested in updating its national pharmaceutical policy, one of its main measures aspires to put in place a solid regulatory system and to strengthen the partnership of the Moroccan pharmaceutical sector by opening up more to the African geographical environment.
The Minister also welcomed the choice of the theme “the pharmacist at the heart of innovation and interdisciplinarity around the patient”, which corroborates “the permanent attention that the Department of Health attaches to good implementation of the pharmaceutical policy in the Kingdom, particularly in its “accessibility, safety and quality of medicines and health products” component, and clearly reflects this firm conviction that access to quality medicines at a fair price must be an integral part of the promotion of partnership and South-South Cooperation advocated by the Kingdom in the field of Health”.
Organized on February 24 and 25, this reference fair for South Mediterranean and African pharmacy, placed under the high patronage of King Mohammed VI, is attended by 5,000 pharmacists and health professionals from 24 countries.