CPA at the 82nd FIP World Congress
The annual gathering of the International Pharmaceutical Federation is a unique opportunity for the Commonwealth Pharmacists Association (CPA) to connect with members and global partners, disseminate learnings from our research and showcase the impact of our work on a global scale.
The 82nd FIP World Congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences took place from 1st-4th September 2024 in Cape Town, South Africa. This is the annual congregation for the global body which represents over four million pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists worldwide. As a global pharmacy charity ourselves, and an allied member of FIP, we were in attendance to engage with pharmacy leaders and influencers from across the world to discuss the future of pharmacy and healthcare.
This year, the theme of the FIP Congress was ‘Innovating for the Future of Healthcare’, highlighting equitable, quality healthcare, innovative drug discovery and access, and the revolutions in healthcare brought about through AI. The Commonwealth Pharmacists Association (CPA), like FIP, envisions a world where everyone has access to quality medicines, vaccines and pharmacy services, and CPA seeks to achieve this through our many programmes of work.
The CPA team maintained a strong presence throughout the Congress. Led by Victoria Rutter (CEO), Beth Ward (Strategic Lead – Workforce Capability Building) and Raymond Anderson (Vice-Chair of Trustees), the team held stakeholder meetings with representatives from several of our member organisations, including the national pharmacy associations (NPAs) of Australia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Conversations were focused on the priorities and challenges the NPAs and the profession faced in their respective countries as well as the advocacy points that we could seek to highlight for them at the 2024 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa.
As part of the official Congress programme, we were excited to be invited to present a session on our Prescribing Companion App (PCA), a feature of our Surveillance and Prescribing Support for Antimicrobial Stewardship Resource Capacity Building (SPARC) programme.
In a session chaired by Yvonne Esseku, our In-Country Consultant for Ghana, a packed auditorium heard from our App Champion for Tanzania, Mary Kisima, and Felix Kaminyoghe, our In-Country Consultant for Malawi, as they demonstrated the App’s contribution to supporting guideline implementation and tackling antimicrobial stewardship (AMR) in low-resource environments. Furthermore, Mary and Felix explained how, by ensuring standard treatment guidelines are accessible at the point of care to pharmacists and other healthcare professionals in Tanzania and Malawi, the App has promoted strong in-country ownership and awareness of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) resources. You can download the Prescribing Companion App here.
Mary and Felix were also involved in a roundtable discussion on substandard and falsified medicines (SFMeds), chaired by CPA Trustee Oksana Pyzik and also featuring pharmacists from Ghana, Malawi, Malaysia, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe. SFMeds are a growing threat to healthcare delivery, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and this session aimed to share challenges and progress in the detection and reporting of SFMeds, focusing on our eight Commonwealth Partnerships for Antimicrobial Stewardship (CwPAMS) countries. Despite various steps being taken in these countries to combat SFMeds, panellists reported several remaining challenges.
For example, in Tanzania, only a select few pharmacies are subject to medicine inspections, leading to a prevalence of SFMeds in community pharmacies, meanwhile, for Malawi, it was suggested that greater capacity was needed at the regulatory authority level to expedite reporting processes. In Zimbabwe, the cost of medications in pharmacies drives much of the population to use the less-regulated open market.
Elsewhere, CPA team members Chiko Savieli (Programme Lead – Workforce Capability Building) and Fran Garraghan (AMR Technical Lead) hosted a session with Hannah Kumwenda and Belinda Aku Atsunyo, Fellows from our Africa Leadership Fellowship-AMS (ALF-A) programme from Malawi and Ghana, respectively, to discuss the impact the fellowship can have on pharmacists’ careers and on AMS projects. Pharmacists in LMICs often encounter formidable AMS challenges, and Chiko, Fran and the ALF-A Fellows elucidated why strong leadership is vital in managing and overcoming these issues. The Fellows drew upon their experiences and explained how the ALF-A programme empowered them to spearhead AMS improvement projects in their communities, ultimately leading to significant advancements in patient outcomes.
Five posters sharing insights into tackling AMR from our Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Team were displayed at the event:
- SPARC: Displaying the relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency of the PCA and point-prevalence survey in increasing awareness of and improving AMS in participating countries, as well as acknowledging recommendations for continuous quality improvement in the next phase of the programme.
- SFMeds: Evaluating the knowledge of SFMeds among healthcare workers in CwPAMS countries, and explaining how CPA seeks to address this knowledge gap through our SFMeds webinar series and Continuing Professional Development course on the subject.
- ALF-A Webinar: Outlining the success of our ‘What Leadership Means to Me’ webinar as a precursor to future ALF-A learning sessions.
- ALF-A Leadership Assessment: Evaluating the success of the ALF-A fellowship, and displaying the finding that a majority of fellows scored highly when assessed on their practicing ability, professional interpersonal skills, leadership ability and management skills.
- Hub-and-Spoke Model (HSM): Assessing the effectiveness of the HSM in delivering AMS interventions within our CwPAMS programme, reflecting on the strong progress made in establishing AMS knowledge partnerships alongside the challenges posed by inadequacies in leadership, training and resources.
Rounding off the event, our CEO, Victoria Rutter, partook in a lighthearted debate (with a serious message) on tackling AMR, battling against CPA Fellow and past President John Bell. Congratulations were also in order for CPA Councillor and Regional Representative for Central Asia, Dr. T. V. Narayana, who was recognised with an FIP Fellowship.
The FIP World Congress being hosted in Africa provided CPA with unique opportunities to connect with our members and partners in the region, share the learnings and impact of work with thousands of pharmacy leaders around the globe, and learn from other thought leaders breaking new ground for the profession. These collaborations are vital for our objectives to advance health for the public benefit and to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge about pharmaceutical sciences and the professional practice of pharmacy, and we look forward to making further strides towards these objectives through the platform that FIP Congresses provide in future.