{"id":50466,"date":"2026-11-10T07:24:38","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T05:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=50466"},"modified":"2026-11-10T07:24:38","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T05:24:38","slug":"sadc-moves-to-scale-up-regional-pharmaceutical-production","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sadc-moves-to-scale-up-regional-pharmaceutical-production\/","title":{"rendered":"SADC moves to scale up regional pharmaceutical production \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are moving to reduce their reliance on international pharmaceutical suppliers by scaling up local medicine production and establishing pooled regional procurement frameworks for essential drugs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The initiative forms a central pillar of discussions at the SADC regional health assembly, which convened senior officials and delegates from all 16 member states at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban, South Africa (SA). Technical committees will finalise recommendations through Wednesday ahead of the ministerial session on Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>SA Health Department Director-General Dr Thembisile Xulu noted that global supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing geopolitical tensions underscored the region&#8217;s acute vulnerability to foreign pharmaceutical dependencies:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Local manufacturing becomes important when you look at what is happening now geopolitically, with drugs not being able to shift. We are working to build empowered local suppliers backed by technical transfer and regional production capacity so that SADC does not find itself running short of critical medication.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;ChannelAfrica&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":35422,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-50466","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"SADC member states plan regional medicine production to cut reliance on foreign suppliers","published_date":"2026-11-10 07:16:01","news_description":"SADC member states plan regional medicine production to cut reliance on foreign suppliers","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50468,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50466\/revisions\/50468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=50466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}