The Drugs Laboratory at the Centre for Laboratory Services and Research (CLSR) of the Ghana Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has been awarded a World Health Organisation (WHO) Prequalified Quality Control Laboratory (QCL) status.
By this achievement, the FDA is now the only Food and Drugs regulatory agency within the West African sub-region to be recognised internationally as a competent institution that can test medicines and medical products under WHO auspices.
The milestone chalked by the FDA makes results of tests run by scientists of the Authority acceptable to all countries.
The benefits of this new status of the FDA include the following: (i) The Laboratory will serve as a Regional Centre of Excellence and train other National Drug Regulatory Agencies in the sub-region; (ii) The FDA can fully participate in international tenders to analyse products that are to be procured by UN agencies, such as UNICEF and the Global Fund; and (iii) The Certificate of Analysis for locally manufactured medicines in Ghana shall receive international recognition and thereby boost their permeation into the international market.
With the prequalified lab in Ghana, the African Continental Free Trade Area provides additional opportunity to Ghanaian pharmaceutical companies within the Africa market.
The FDA’s Laboratory has, by this feat, become a key international player in the testing and verifying of finished pharmaceutical products to ensure that they meet international standards of safety, quality, and efficacy, and would, therefore, require all the necessary support to maintain this new status.
Additionally, it is to be noted that, once the FDA’s Laboratory has become a prequalified QCL, the Authority may be invited to participate in WHO prequalification monitoring projects that are undertaken periodically to assess the quality of medicines procured by United Nations (UN) agencies.
With this accomplishment, the FDA’s Laboratory, as the only WHO-prequalified laboratory in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sub-region, the Authority is in readiness and poised to provide effective regulation to support the national vaccine manufacturing agenda and ensure access to quality, safe, and efficacious vaccines and medicines for the nation and the African Continent.
