CPA, NPAs win historic Health Ministers' backing for East, Central and Southern African College of Pharmacists
Ministers at the 76th ECSA-HC Health Ministers Conference endorsed a CPA member-led proposal for the creation of a new postgraduate “college without walls” for the East, Central and Southern African Health Community
Beth Ward, Strategic Lead for Workforce Capability Building at CPA, presents at a pre-conference gathering on antimicrobial resistance
Left to right: Felix Kaminyoghe (Malawi/CPA/PHASOM), Maxencia Nabiryo (Uganda/CPA), Mary Kisima (Tanzania/PST), Dr. Wairimu Njuki (Kenya/PSK), Beth Ward (UK/CPA), Dr Jonans Tusiimire (Uganda/PSU) and Gift Chaerka (Zimbabwe/PSZ)
“CPA’s successful advocacy efforts to secure endorsement for the establishment of a Regional College of Pharmacists will harmonise training and recognition across ESCA countries, ensuring consistent competencies for AMR management, and will facilitate cross-border collaboration in surveillance and regulation. We congratulate CPA on their advocacy efforts and offer our sincere gratitude to the ECSA-HC Health Ministers and all supporting partners.”
Gift Chakera
Past President, Pharmaceutical Society of Zimbabwe
A Commonwealth Pharmacists Association (CPA)-led delegation has won an historic endorsement from Health Ministers representing nine countries – including eight Commonwealth states – in the East, Central and Southern Africa (ECSA) region for the creation of a new College of Pharmacists to provide postgraduate training capacity for the profession across the region.
Beth Ward, CPA’s Strategic Lead for Workforce Capability Building, attended the 76th Health Ministers Conference of the ECSA Health Community (ESCA-HC) in Eswatini from 3rd to 5th February along with representatives from CPA members the Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya (PSK), the Pharmaceutical Society of Uganda (PSU), the Kingdom of Eswatini Pharmacy Association (KEPA), the Pharmaceutical Society of Malawi (PHASOM) and the Pharmaceutical Society of Tanzania (PST); and Associate Member the Pharmaceutical Society of Zimbabwe (PSZ).
ECSA-HC was established in 1974 to foster regional cooperation and strengthen capacity to address the health needs of its member countries, which today include the nine nations of Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Eswatini, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe – making it a region home to almost a quarter of a billion people, the vast majority citizens or residents of the Commonwealth. Health Ministers from each member state gather periodically to agree on regional policy commitments and authorise projects to strengthen health systems through international collaboration.
One of the ways ECSA-HC has supported regional health systems strengthening and workforce capability building has been through the establishment of regional colleges of advanced learning, providing clinicians with opportunities for advanced or specialist training that they may not previously have had access to in their own domestic education systems. A lack of highly specialist healthcare workers is one of the critical gaps that ECSA-HC has historically identified as a barrier to developing health systems in the region.
Currently colleges exist for several specific medical specialties, as well as broader professions like surgeons and nurses. These postgraduate institutions use a fellowship model to provide advanced education in their disciplines, supporting professionals to develop higher skills and specialist expertise whilst continuing to work in local health systems. This unique model not only helps to broaden the opportunities available to professionals and improve patient care but also encourages highly capable healthcare workers to remain in their home countries.
One of the major benefits of the ECSA-HC College model is that its place-based fellowships make training accessible to workers outside of major urban centres in ECSA-HC countries. District-level hospitals serving regional communities within member states are one of the main beneficiaries of fellowship education for other professions.
Until now however, advanced training opportunities like this have been limited for pharmacists in the region. CPA has provided training in leadership development, behaviour change and quality improvement in antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) through our African Leadership Fellowship – AMS (ALF-A) initiative, part of our Commonwealth Partnerships for Antimicrobial Stewardship (CwPAMS) programme funded by the UK’s Fleming Fund in several ECSA-HC countries, but no dedicated educational institution exists at the regional level for pharmacists.
But at the 76th Health Ministers Conference in Eswatini, where CPA joined 400 delegates from other global health organisations like the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Africa Centre for Disease Control (Africa CDC), CPA and our members made the case that an ECSA-HC College of Pharmacists would be a powerful intervention to strengthen the regional workforce’s capacity and improve quality of care for patients – and Health Ministers agreed.
CPA delegates in conversation outside the venue for the 76th ECSA-HC Health Ministers meeting in Eswatini in February 2025
Left to right: Felix Kaminyoghe (Malawi/CPA/PHASOM), Maxencia Nabiryo (Uganda/CPA), Mary Kisima (Tanzania/PST), Dr. Wairimu Njuki (Kenya/PSK), Beth Ward (UK/CPA), Dr Jonans Tusiimire (Uganda/PSU) and Gift Chaerka (Zimbabwe/PSZ)
Making the case for the College
In the run up to the gathering at Eswatini, CPA worked in close partnership with our member NPAs in Eswatini, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia – the Republic of South Africa being one of ECSA-HC’s major regional partners – to develop an outline of how an ECSA College of Pharmacists could operate and to confirm that the College would align with the priorities of our members.
Beth and Maxencia Nabiryo, CPA’s Head of Programmes, also worked in partnership with the ECSA-HC Secretariat team to understand the logistical and practical principles that underpin the operation of the existing Colleges. Particular inspiration was taken from the College of Surgeons and the College of Nursing which serve similar roles of providing specialist education for entire professions.
Through our consultation with members and drawing on our experience advocating for patients and the profession at other major ministerial conferences up to and including the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), we identified early on in the development of our proposal that aligning the new College to a tangible public health need where we have an evidence basis for the effectiveness of pharmacist leadership would be vital not just for winning government backing, but also for ensuring that the College would make an effective contribution to local health systems from its very first learner cohort.
For this reason CPA’s proposal drew upon our considerable expertise in developing and implementing training programmes for AMS. With support from ECSA-HC’s Secretariat, we identified specialist AMS training as a logical first pathway for the College aligning well with the role of pharmacists as clinicians specialised in the safe, effective and sustainable use of medicines, whilst also being able to draw upon CPA’s experience providing broad-based skills training to tens of thousands of healthcare workers and advanced mid-career training to dozens of leadership fellows across Africa since 2019.
William Mpute
President, Pharmaceutical Society of Malawi
In fact, there would be an extraordinary gathering of key stakeholders on the eve of the Conference in Eswatini to discuss a broader package of recommendations for Ministers to endorse in the struggle to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This session brought together CPA with other organisations like the Africa CDC, ICARS and ReACT to explore ways of furthering regional commitments to fighting AMR. Working closely with the ECSA-HC Secretariat and our national partners, CPA developed a session to make the case for how a College of Pharmacists could be an effective tool for building the capability of the workforce to promote AMS and confront AMR as a public health threat.
NPAs had a critical role to play in this session and throughout the conference, offering compelling evidence of the national or local impact of pharmacist leadership in the fight against AMS and identifying how a College of Pharmacists could help their countries overcome various barriers to access to healthcare.
Beth and the representative of the Pharmaceutical Society of Malawi and CPA technical consultant for CwPAMS, Felix Kaminyoghe, also presented evidence of the impact that pharmacist leadership fellows have had on the ground in ECSA countries over the last half decade with CPA’s support. We highlighted case studies that show, for example, how interventions by CPA Fellows have dramatically increased adherence to antibiotic guidelines or significantly reduced stock turnover at regional hospital facilities.
Attendees at the session, organised by the ECSA-HC Secretariat as part of the official pre-conference programme, agreed to adopt the recommendation to create a College of Pharmacists and take them to the full meeting of Ministers. There advocacy efforts by the CPA team and supportive stakeholders helped to ensure that formal authorisation to proceed with developing a rigorous proposal for the College was adopted by Ministers as part of their wider commitments in a resolution dedicated to tackling AMR.
CPA delegates present the evidence and policy case for the creation of an ECSA-HC College of Pharmacists at the pre-conference gathering on antimicrobial resistance
A big win for CPA's advocacy work
CPA’s successful championing of a College of Pharmacists represents a potentially tremendous victory for the patients, for the profession and for the region. It is a testament to the influence CPA is afforded by our unique position in the global health landscape as an organisation that has a proven track record in intervention design and delivery, possesses extensive technical expertise in a number of public health fields, and a pan-Commonwealth membership model that allows us to act effectively as a voice for our profession’s needs and ambitions.
As a membership organisation made up of National Pharmacy Associations, we are able to effectively champion the needs of the profession in a given country or region of the Commonwealth, and make evidence-based cases that for policies and initiatives that will authentically serve the needs of patients. With our expertise in training and empowering tens of thousands of clinicians and delivering high-impact, multinational development programmes to tackle public health threats, we are well positioned to showcase best practice and develop models for new interventions for governments or funders to back. Uniquely, our experience means we are also uniquely equipped to to turn those proposals into tangible outcomes on the ground with our proven track record of delivering at the local, national and regional levels.
Our global talent pool and sophisticated international networks, including holding official relations with organisations like WHO and our leadership role in the Commonwealth Health Professions and Partners Alliance which represents the whole workforce, also allow us to foster effective partnerships across national boundaries to make the case for policy outcomes. We can leverage skills, share expertise and mobilise advocacy resources from multiple countries and different contexts to make compelling, rigorous cases for how to turn policy into practice. Our triumph at the ECSA-HC Health Ministers Conference represents a huge win for our members.
This also represents an enormous win for pharmacists in eight Commonwealth countries who have not had opportunities available to pharmacists in other African Commonwealth states. Our proposal brings ECSA in alignment with West Africa, where a West African Postgraduate College of Pharmacists has trained hundreds of specialist pharmacists as fellows since its establishment in 1997.
CPA’s Beth Ward presents lessons from our work to empower pharmacists as leaders in the struggle against antimicrobial resistance, making the case for how an ECSA-HC College of Pharmacists could see our intervention’s successes scaled up and sustained across the region
From policy to practice and advocacy to action
With the endorsement of Health Ministers, CPA can now begin working with our national members, the ECSA-HC Secretariat and other international partners to begin developing a framework for the establishment of the new College of Pharmacists. This will include scoping out funding mechanisms to ensure its viability and sustainability as well as beginning to develop concrete plans for how the College will operate.
Although developing the concrete proposal for the College will take some time and require further approvals in the future, the in principle endorsement of Health Ministers is a hugely significant indicator that thanks to the work of CPA and NPAs pharmacist leadership in the field of AMS is being taken seriously by the most senior stakeholders and decision-makers in Africa.
CPA hopes that the eventual establishment of the ECSA-HC College of Pharmacists will represent a transformative intervention for the professional development and career opportunities of the some 13,000 pharmacists in the ECSA-HC region, and in turn, for progress towards achieving universal health coverage with stronger, more resilient and capable national health systems.
“We are thrilled and grateful that ECSA Health Ministers have recognised the impact that a College of Pharmacists would have on the region. Pharmacists have an absolutely critical role to play in tackling public health threats like antibiotic resistance and in managing many of the non-communicable diseases that increasingly challenge ECSA communities, but have limited access to the kind of advanced training opportunities available to doctors and nurses despite being on the frontline of patient care. The College would bring training opportunities in leadership, advanced skills and clinical expertise in line with other professions, driving improvement across health systems and strengthening the safe, effective, and sustainable use of life-saving medicines.”
Beth Ward
CPA Strategic Lead for Workforce Capability Building