More health industry ambition needed in Africa: researcher

“African countries already have a health industrial sector, notably in generic pharmaceuticals. The challenge now is to sustain and develop it,” Prof Maureen Mackintosh, Emeritus Professor of Economics, School of Social Sciences and Global Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The Open University, UK, acknowledged respectively in a recent presentation to delegates on a PitchWorldFast African Healthcare webinar discussing the “Africa Healthcare value chain from the API to delivering the drug and medical devices to the patients through packaging and production”.

Dealing specifically with her topic, “Framework and policies needed for the industrialisation in the healthcare sector” – “a book, not a 15 minute presentation!” – Prof Mackintosh explained that much of the research carried out by her unit had been a collaborative effort between a range of African colleagues.

The scale of the existing healthcare industrial sector in Africa, she explained as an example, had been done for the Institute of Economic Justice in Johannesburg.

Among the key points Prof Mackintosh raised from her research findings was that in essential generics, technological upgrading and wider production ranges required policy support for industrial deepening, F&D capabilities, technology transfer, “and more industrial ambition!”

In medical devices, biopharmaceuticals and API’s, she had pointed out earlier, the continent was generally weaker due to the core competitors and/or collaborators being South or East Asian firms.

There was, however, potential in biopharmaceuticals on the basis that vaccine production collaboration could serve as a platform to develop wider capabilities requiring research and development support and related university-industry collaboration.

Despite generic pharmaceuticals being in the forefront on the health industry landscape, Prof Mackintosh warned that a huge unmet need for many essential generics remains a crisis in many African populations.

“Basic generics are widely produced in Africa, but we have a mixed picture of decline, some new investment and a lack of industrial and policy ambition! By industrial ambition, I mean firms that actually develop markets, generate their own market intelligences and seek innovative partners.”

A related concern, Prof Mackintosh added, was the need for industrial protection: “This is essential to sustain local protection against export support from competitors. Antibiotics are a particular concern in this regard.”

To meet the overall health needs of their populations, African health policy-makers and administrators, she recommended, must break down the “silos” of health and industrial policy: “Health industries need a local market, health services need local supplies, and importantly, quality and reliability need joint working.

“Industry, working with innovators and joint venture partners, needs to have foresight on, for example, coming changes to first line treatments, drugs soon coming off patent, and bold F&D competence ahead of such changes.

“Support science and technology and integrate researchers with industry and health,“ Prof Mackintosh advised in her concluding remarks.

“The pandemic showed how innovation could be done fast in a number of countries with an existing science and industrial base.

“This is a long-term commitment!”