Winnie Byanyima applauds Museveni’s vision on local HIV drug production

• Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, has lauded President Museveni for his foresight in establishing local HIV drug production in Uganda through Quality Chemicals Industries Limited.
• Byanyima also urged for a faster integration of African health markets to compete globally and retain pharmaceutical revenues within the continent.

Winnie Byanyima who is the Executive Director of UNAIDS Winnie Byanyima has applauded President Museveni’s vision in trying to end the HIV epidemic in the country over his support towards starting a local HIV Manufacturing company. Although the two personalities share fractious private and political history that dates many years ago, Byanyima heaped praise in this aspect.

According to Winnie, President Museveni’s efforts helped to start a manufacturing plant for HIV drugs in Uganda. This was before anyone could see it the potential of this venture on the continent.

However, she noted that that this particular company has had to channel off into manufacturing other drugs to support itself. This is because it could not be self sufficient on producing HIV drugs only as the market is limited.

The human rights activist and distinguished academician added that the integration of Africa’s market and harmonization of standards in health on the continent need to happen quickly. This will apparently help Uganda to tap into the finances in the medicine industry. In turn it will stop the outflow of money from the continent by Indian and American companies.

“We have to give credit to President Museveni because he saw before anyone else and helped to start up an HIV manufacturing company in Uganda. However, it’s now branches into producing other drugs to supplement itself because it cannot rely on just producing HIV drugs for just the 1.3 million positive Ugandans. This means it doesn’t produce to its capacity. Therefore the integration of Africa’s market and harmonization of standards in health need to happen faster so we can also earn and win ourselves the market dominated by Indian companies who earn from our diseases and the American companies that own the patents,” she said.

The company in discussion is Quality Chemicals Industries Limited found in Luzira, Kampala.

This company is a joint venture between Indian Pharmaceutical Company Cipla and QCIL. It’s the first of its nature in Uganda with emphasis on availing drugs vital for people at lower prices by cutting on the import costs.