Rational Management of Medicines |
A focus on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
1 - 13 November 2009, Ifakara, Tanzania
Medicines are an essential and cost-effective tool of health care and an important element of health systems. Yet today, for millions of people worldwide essential medicines remain unavailable and unaffordable. Diseases of poverty including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis tragically claim innumerable lives in low income countries. It is about getting evidence-based and effective control interventions such as medicines to the people who need them, whether by reducing their costs, promoting research and development, improving their distribution, increasing their efficacy and acceptability, or slowing down the development of antimicrobial resistance. Rational medicine policy and management is one approach to tackle these problems and is critically important in view of constrained health budgets and to achieve efficiency, equity and quality of health care in pluralistic health systems.
This two weeks course will be conducted in a rural area of Tanzania and will be complemented with field visits experience to address the know-do gap and the system approach to diseases of poverty.
International and Tanzanian facilitators together with local health professionals will create a challenging educational atmosphere. The interaction between participants from North and South will promote and enrich knowledge exchange. The course is unique in combining theoretical knowledge with the reality of a rural district and the questions and skills related to medicine access.
Course objectives are to enable health professionals to understand and apply the concepts and principles of essential medicines and rational medicine policy and management, to recognise the need for a national and international medicine policy environment and to apply practical field experience for rational medicine management within different health system contexts.