Brazzaville, Congo (PANA) - The Congolese government has set terms for the use of  chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, according to a directive issued by the Minister of Health and Population, Jacqueline Lydia Mikolo on Wednesday.   The prescription of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine is fixed to the general practitioner or specialist working in a [...] Full text...

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (PANA) -  Burkina Faso's Parliament has adopted the treaty establishing the African Medicines Agency (AMA), an official source said on Wednesday. According to a memo from Parliament, MPs unanimously passed the bill authorising the ratification of AMA's creation on Tuesday. "The ratification of this treaty by our country will [...] Full text...

Brazzazville, Congo (PANA) - The head of Congo's National Gendarmerie's Central Judicial Research Service, Lt-Col. Victor Gandziami, announced on Friday in Brazzaville that his office has arrested three agents, alleged perpetrators of drug theft at the Brazzaville University (CHU-B) hospital, the country's largest medical institution. "These three agents were fraudulently taking [...] Full text...

Bujumbura, Burundi (PANA) - A non-governmental British organization for relief, development and advocacy, Food for the Hungry, on Thursday over 10 million tablets of Albendazole drug to the Burundian government for deworming children aged up to 14 years. According to Burundi public radio, children infested with worms will be treated next [...] Full text...

Nouakchott, Mauritania (PANA) - The Mauritanian government has taken a series of measures to rehabilitate the health system and ensure the efficient operation of health services, according to a document from the Ministry of Health received on Thursday by PANA.   These include a detailed plan to restore confidence and bring health [...] Full text...

Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire (PANA) - Dr. Arounan Diarra, President of the National Council of the Order of Pharmacists of Côte d'Ivoire (CNOP-CI), said in the hunt for the proliferation of fake or low quality medicines, it was necessary to tackle the sources of the scourge, in this case the reorganization [...] Full text...

Cotonou, Benin (PANA) - The Beninese government is to establish an integrated pharmaceutical information system, "e-pharmacy", to ensure traceability, according to a decision of the Council of Ministers revealed on Wednesday.   According to the Council, "this system will make it possible to optimize and secure the traceability of medicines throughout the [...] Full text...

Abidjan, Ivory Coast (PANA)   -  The Ivorian minister of health and public hygiene, Eugène Aka Aouélé, and the Union of Laboratory Applied Scientific Pharmacology (UPSA) Friday jointly launched a campaign against the purchase of street medicines. This media campaign launched on the first public television channel, RTI 1, has a twofold [...] Full text...

Conakry, Guinea (PANA) - Guinea is planning to set up a brigade for combating  the illicit sale of drugs, an official source said Tuesday in the country's capital, Conakry. 'Medicrime' , the proposed structure, will coordinate repression and enforce  compliance with the rules of the pharmaceutical profession. Guinea Pharmacists Association president , [...] Full text...

Johannesburg, South Africa (PANA) - Medical charity, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), has lauded the move by the South African government to release a new intellectual property (IP) policy that will stop the country’s process of blindly handing out patents, thus providing hope to people across the country who cannot afford [...] Full text...

Khartoum, Sudan (PANA) - Sudan's Ministry of International Cooperation and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) on Thursday signed a US$60 million agreement on a three-year procurement support to the Ministry of Health, the UN agency said in a press release. The project comes as a major breakthrough in availing life-saving [...] Full text...

New York, US (PANA) - As the world celebrates the achievement of reaching 15 million people with HIV treatment and commits to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030, the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) on Tuesday reminded countries of the urgent need to ensure that new trade agreements under [...] Full text...

New York, US (PANA) - A report by the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) has said three quarters of the world population has no access to proper pain relief treatment. INCB is a UN body charged with overseeing governments’ compliance with international drug control treaties. A UN statement on the report, [...] Full text...

Brazzaville, Congo (PANA) - Experts of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) are meeting in Brazzaville, Congo, to review the Act of the African Union (AU) on the harmonization of registration for medicinal products, PANA learnt Wednesday from the Congolese Ministry of Health and Population. The law on harmonization and [...] Full text...

Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - A nuclear medicine department equipped with the latest diagnostic and treatment equipment, has opened at the Tripoli Hospital, in a major move to reduce the overseas' evacuation of Libyan patients. The department, which opened Thursday in the Libyan capital, has the capacity to diagnose tumors, among other [...] Full text...

Brazzaville, Congo (PANA) – Hospital care and medicines account for three quarters of the health expenditures from the income of the average Congolese, a situation that increases the poverty rate, the Director of health information and research, Richard Bilekot, disclosed here Wednesday. The disclosure was made during the 2009-2010 health [...] Full text...