Health Action International (HAI) announces the publication of its report on the HAI Eastern Africa training workshop "Promoting Rational Drug Use in the Community" which was held in Nairobi, Kenya from 14-19 March, 1997.
While pharmaceuticals can play a key role in improving health, their benefits remain largely unknown to millions of African consumers. Instead, drugs often contribute to serious health problems on the continent due to misdiagnosis, incorrect self-medication and poor quality of drugs. Many Africans lack access to the most essential drugs, and scarce resources are often spent on ineffective and expensive treatments.
Discussing ways to address these problems was the theme of HAI's Eastern Africa Regional Training Workshop. The six-day meeting brought together consumer advocates and pharmaceutical experts from Eritrea, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda,and Zambia to determine ways to promote the essential drugs concept and to identify problems hindering rational drug use. This report summarises the participants' presentations, conclusions and plans for the future.
The training workshop in Nairobi marks the start of the HAI Africa programme. Further regional training sessions are scheduled to be held in Southern Africa and in Francophone Africa during 1998.
Copies of the report on the first of these regional workshops can be obtained from the HAI-Europe office.