WHAT WE DO | SARPAM
The Southern Africa Regional Programme on Access to Medicines and Diagnostics (SARPAM) launched in January 2010. SARPAM is founded on the belief that effective collective action and innovation will improve Access to Medicines across the regional economic community. Working with member state governments, civil society, regional institutions, international agencies, research networks and the private sector, SARPAM will support the good work being done through existing partnerships and initiatives, as well as identify new Partnerships for Action that will achieve ambitious results.
The programme offers new resources in the form of targeted funding, technical assistance, partnership building and networking opportunities. As the primary sponsor of this new initiative, the UK Government hopes that SARPAM will develop into an open platform for collaboration and partnership that will attract a broad support base over the next 4-5 years. This will create significant opportunities to substantially improve the marketplace for good quality essential medicines.
SARPAM offers to support and strengthen the capacity of regional institutions to implement plans that will benefit from multi-country action. The SADC Pharmaceutical Business Plan endorsed by regional Ministers of Health in 2007 is the leading example of this. Civil Society Organisations within the region will be supported to lead Partnerships for Action that have the potential to positively influence the pharmaceutical market, including the demand for medicines and their rational use. New development innovation seed funding could be made available to promising new Civil Society initiatives.
A regional knowledge hub, the SARPAM Observatory will be established to make transparent pharmaceutical market intelligence and evidence for policy accessible to all stakeholders in the region. SARPAM carried out an intensive Pharmaceutical Market Analysis in the first 9 months of 2010 to provide a baseline data set. A regional Evidence for Action Network will be supported as part of the Global Access to Medicines Research Network to set the agenda for research and to make research findings available as global public goods.
The Responsible Action Consortium, led by Re-Action! (Southern Africa) has been contracted by DFID to manage implementation of SARPAM. This includes establishing a network of development professionals to work with the UK government southern Africa regional team so that priorities on Access to Medicines within SADC can be more effectively responded to and local capacity can be built.
