AAU School of Pharmacy Holds a Project Meeting
Addis Ababa University (AAU) School of Pharmacy in collaboration with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and other international organizations organized the ‘Senselet Project’ meeting at Radisson BLU Hotel on May 20, 2022.
The project aims to enhance and strengthen the capacities of people working within Healthcare Supply Chain Management (HSCM) for essential and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Ethiopia, according to the information from the meeting.
Professor Teferi Gedif, Social and Administrative Pharmacy Professor at College of Health Sciences and PhD Programme Coordinator, said, the main challenges facing the health sector are shortage of access of medicines and medical facilities. The department’s surveys also indicate that there is lack of capacity building in this regard, he added.
Prof. Teferi stated the school of pharmacy needs to work hard to develop skills and capacity building as an academic institution. He also said that the main purpose of ‘Senselet Project’ is to collect information that can be used as a resource for policy and to reinforce it in useful ways.
‘Senselet Project’, according to Prof. Teferi, is a three-year project for now which focuses on the capacity building of the university’s pharmacy school and thereby improving the efficiency of the teachers working in the school.
The big gap seen in coordinating and providing humanitarian logistics and resources in a timely manner needs to be improved in the health sector, Prof. Teferi further stated.
Prof. Teferi explained how the supply of medicines should be delivered as soon as possible in the areas affected by natural and man-made disasters and this was another topic of discussion in the project meeting.
Prof. Teferi explained that PhD students at the School of Pharmacy are short of resources and receive very little funding from the government and these force them to spend many years to graduate. He hoped that the Flagship project will give priority to solve this problem.
“We provide our PhD students with academic experience and short-term training by sending them overseas to Europe which also enables them to bring us back information, a valuable resource for our school,” Prof. Teferi confirmed.
Mrs. Jane Rasmussen, Novo Nordisk Vice President, in the interview said that her company which is located in Denmark, is one of the biggest insulin manufacturing companies in the world and delivers almost fifty percent of all the insulin products needed in the world.
She said that they are looking into social projects that can help lifting the supply chain competencies across healthcare sectors. She said, “I have a background as an engineer and I have worked in the supply chain in Novo Nordisk for the past eighteen years.”
“In connection with ‘Senselet Project’, my company is always by Ethiopia’s side to help the pharmaceutical health sector by strengthening the education within the Healthcare Supply Chain Management in the country to assist on such matters,” Mrs. Jane noted.
The international organizations that collaborated with the AAU School of Pharmacy in the ‘Senselet Project’ meeting were Kühnue Foundation, World Diabetes Foundation, The University of Geneva, The Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies and Novo Nordisk.
Source: Addis Ababa University