Barbados to enter pharmaceutical market with framework and facility Loop Barbados

Black Immigrant Daily News

Over 4,000 to 5,000 jobs can be created for Bajans over the next four to five years, if and when Barbados starts making pharmaceuticals.

According to the country’s leader, Barbados is on the verge of stepping fully into the pharmaceutical industry if all the moving pieces from the latest Rwanda trip fall into their strategic places.

In this hemisphere, “because no country can do it alone”, Barbados will be going forward in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals with Guyana in this region, and Rwanda and Ghana in Africa. The move is supported by the European Union Commission, the European Investment Bank, World Health Organization, and the Susan Buffet Foundation.

Happy about this development, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said that this the “biggest game changer since we came to office”. She said that Government has been working “very quietly” since April to get the necessary platform ready and started.

Becoming a player in the pharmaceutical industry, PM Mottley said that work will be going into figuring out the regulatory framework over the next nine to twelve months.

Furthermore, demonstrating that the ground work has been and is being laid, she shared that the head of the Rwanda’s Food and Drug Administration was in Barbados six to seven weeks ago and working with the Ministry of Health. “The preliminary work, meeting with our own people in the Drug Service and the Ministry of Health has already started. We have now to engage and to put the rest of the regulatory framework in place and then once that happens, we then monitor and deal with the identification of the space for the pharmaceutical part, in fact that will happen on a parallel track.”

In terms of infrastructure, it is the plan to have a physical pharmaceutical entity on island to establish the manufacturing of the pharmaceutical products.

With respect to a location, the Prime Minister says that a space still needs to be found and that is “significantly difficult” because the facility would not be the regular warehouse or manufacturing facility as traditionally erected. This new facility would require steam and water and high temperatures etcetera. “This is a highly complex engagement.”

But despite any of these challenging components, PM Mottley stressed that this is a “major, major, major success for Barbados” and “this is serious work in action.”

Answering the question of why go into pharmaceuticals, PM Mottley reiterated, “We cannot rely on what is in Barbados to move forward; we would not get too far.”

The prime minister also clarified that certain aspects of the pharmaceutical manufacturing will be conducted and completed in Barbados and others in Guyana. She said that the products will not be manufactured and bottled in the same facility or country, for example. “This is s a very, very complex process,” and thus the “European Union support is critical and the Rwanda Health and Drug Agency support is critical, but we will develop our own capacity in the Americas,” she affirmed.

NewsAmericasNow.com