Project Purpose

The principal objective of this project is to contribute to the improvement of the quality of medicines and thus, of public health in DRC and Rwanda. More precisely, it aims to strengthen the local capacity to respond to the need for quality medicines and to develop a platform of people in the pharmaceutical sector in the field of quality assurance and control. To achieve this objective, the project will on the one hand train people working in the pharmaceutical sector, including in the academic, the legal and industrial professions, and on the other hand develop the tools to contribute to the improvement of the quality of medicines. Improvement of teaching capacity and availability of quality control documentation are sub-objectives pursued in the framework of this project.

Main Activities

As a first activity a seminar will be organised to promote the project and to initiate participants from different government authorities, the churches and the health sector to the importance of the quality problem of medicines. The seminar is the preliminary step of this project that is done to select the different candidates. 

The second activity will be theoretical training for a limited number of persons selected among the participants of the seminar. The training will focus on the basis of the quality of drugs: drug manufacturing and drug control / analysis and will take into account the different professional backgrounds of each trainee. This activity is important since most of the trainees will have graduated a long time ago and their knowledge of the relevant issues will need updating and upgrading. Both, the seminar and the subsequent training will be carried out in the beneficiary countries and will last for one month. Professors and Researchers from the Universities of Liège and Brussels as well as from the Catholic University of Louvain, selected on basis of their expertise, will act as trainers. Topics will include Quality Assurance, regulatory and statistical tools applied in the pharmaceutical industry, manufacturing and quality control of medicines, and management in the pharmaceutical sector.

Theoretical training through internet-based e-learning will form the third phase of the project. It complements the second activity, since it gives the candidates access to different and more documents available through the web platform specifically created for this purpose. This mode of teaching also allows the candidates to interact with other trainers for questions concerning special subjects of their particular working sector.

The fourth activity is practical training in the different facilities of the Belgian laboratories associated to the project. This will allow the candidates to put into practice the knowledge acquired during the theoretical training, and to familiarise with the procedures specific for their own professional sector. The fifth activity focuses on a specific training for auditors or evaluators. This is a requirement in relationship with the creation of a Federal Drug Agency in DRC while improving the capacity of such an organism to carry out audits and evaluations of drug registration files before their release for commercialisation.

The last activity is the reintegration of the candidates into the professional environment of their home countries. This will be a necessary accompanying measure to ensure that the acquired knowledge is valued in the professional environment.