Issued by: North West Communication Service
ADDRESS BY NORTH WEST PREMIER POPO MOLEFE TO THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PHARMACEUTICAL AND PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES AT ESKOM CENTRE MIDRAND
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 24 1996
To this venerable and historic Conference I bring only profound greetings and the felicitations of the government of the North West Province. It is my personal pleasure to address especially the delegates who have traversed long distances from Australia, Europe, Asia and Africa to join with us in finding solutions to the age old battle for survival against our common enemy, disease.
This conference is timely and appropriate for us South Africans in view of our strategic objectives that underpin our health care policy. Our National Drugs Policy aims to optimise the potential of drugs and medicines to improve the health condition of millions of our peoples, within the available resources, and to ensure an adequate and reliable supply of safe, cost effective and good qualify drugs.
This policy takes into consideration international approaches, including the World Health Organisation, to regulate drug use and handling by prescribers, dispensers and the patient.
Since before the time of Hippocrates, nothing has occupied the attention of human beings almost to the point of obsession than the fight against infirmity, disease, degeneration, aging and death. Medicines and drugs have always formed an integral part of our lives and have generated enormous health benefits for billions of people all over the world.
As part of humanity's fight against life threatening diseases, significant changes occur each and every day in the fields of medicines and drugs, world wide.
At the same time, health professionals are hard pressed to stay a jump or two ahead of new viruses that descend on the hapless homo sapiens in a grand conspiracy to render the species extinct.
I am hopeful and indeed confident, chairperson, that yesterday's deliberations in this regard are going to yield the intended results and ensure that drug use and drug development provide optimal therapeutic benefit to ameliorate the effects of diseases such as AIDS, TB, asthma, malaria and others.
Further debate tomorrow can only benefit from the combination of experiences and research from different parts of the world. Also, it is very encouraging to learn that Conference has deliberated on the relationship between medicine and education. This can only benefit our society because the drug discovery, drug development, clinical studies, education and health care are crucial elements of our health care policy. One is left in no doubt that the recent discoveries, developments and emerging therapies that have been noted by conference will expand health provision to include those communities that have not had access to quality delivery in the past.
Studies in patient populations indicates the important role that the study of drugs in different communities plays in assessing efficacy and safety.
New technologies to ensure the quality of medicine and electronic communication are some of the history-making developments that Conference has debated. The deliberations on TB, asthma, epilepsy, hypertension and malaria indicate that these diseases continue to plague our people even in this age.
Chairperson, the programme of the Conference is testimony to the commitment of health professionals who have vowed to take the battle to disease by pooling resources, human and otherwise, to address health care challenges that face all of us.
In closing, dear delegates, I wish once more to thank international participants and to acknowledge their presence and their willingness to share their knowledge with us. May your stay in sunny South Africa be enjoyable. I trust that you will be enriched with the splendour of this country and its people and take only pleasant memories with you back home.
I wish you a successful Conference.