DILI, 14 february 2022 (TATOLI)- World Health Organization (WHO) and Australia’s Therapeutic Good Administration (TAG) will offer capacity building to 200 professionals on the drug control system.
The training will be offered following the discussion made between the Ministry of Health (MoH), the World Health Organization, and the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) team on the National regulatory Assessment of medical and drug Administration.
During the discussion, the Gov’t Ministry of Health and its partners evaluated the national regulatory, and medical tools, and control the quality of drugs in Timor-Leste.
Arvin Mathur, The Country Representative of WHO, acknowledge the drug controlling system in Timor-Leste is effective however saying the country needs more evaluation on health service.
“It needed further improvement on the national regulatory system in Timor Leste because there are fragmented, thus we are making an effort for more strengthen the capacity of the regulator system on medicine quality and drugs test. It is required the pre-benchmarking on assessment of National Regulatory System (NRS) in Timor- Leste,’’ He said.
WHO overview on NRS has limited human resources therefore the functions of the NRAs are still fragmented and mandated to the four separate entities/institutions namely: The National Directorate for Pharmacy and Medicines carries registration and marketing authorization, pharmacological, market surveillance and control, The General Health Inspectorate is in charge of regulatory inspection, The cabinet of Licensing Establishment and Professional Registration oversees licensing establishments and The functions of quality control testing of health product are performed by the Directorate of toxicology including water and environmental analysis within the National Health Laboratory.
“Following this overview WHO and MoH acknowledged that Timor-Leste lacks the human resource to provide service on drug control, particularly in NRS, therefore the WHO and MoH provided specialist experts from Australia to share the idea and input for over 200 Timor-Leste professionals of the drugs control system,” said Mathur.
Minister of Health, Odete Maria Freitas Belo said, the discussion today was to share the mechanism with partners to get input to have more improvement on strengthening the control of inequality drugs.
“We are discussing an assessment on drug quality control, drugs storage system in national warehouse and the distribution system and we also revised health daily services such as the use of medical tolls and also control on drugs quality through the national regulatory system (NRS), therefore MoH would like to get input from the Australia TGA team on drugs control system, especially on the legal drugs procurement documents to ensure the drugs are qualified drugs,” Minister Belo told journalists in Novo Turizmu Hotel, this Tuesday.
Meanwhile the Strategic partnership program of TGA, Paul Huleatt said as a representative of the Australia Government Authority responsible for evaluating, assessing, and monitoring products that are defined as therapeutic goods, it requires to regulate medicines, medical devices, and drugs system to help Timor Leste stay healthy and safe.
“We are providing technical assistance on benchmarking on assessment of the National Regulatory System (NRS) in Timor-Leste. We will have an assessment on drug control and ensure the drug system must be in the legal procurement. However, we still do not have any recommendation as this is the first day of this meeting,’’ He said.
In addition, Huleatt said the Australian foreign affairs department is committed to supporting and providing funds for therapeutic administration to carry out development assistance programs for the country are needed including Timor-Leste.
“We are working together to learn and experience, we will immediately work with Timorese staff,’’ He concluded
Journalist: José Belarmino De Sá
Editor: Nelia B.
