The CPA Newsletter – Q2
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
Welcome to the roundup of our latest news.
It has been an exciting few months seeing face to face travel finally returning and getting to meet some of our wonderful team who are now based all over the Commonwealth!
We are looking forward to being represented by some of our global team at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Kigali in June and meeting more of our members, team and supporters later this year at the FIP Congress in Seville!
The Pandemic has presented many challenges to us all, but we also appreciate the emphasis that it has returned to health and we welcome the inclusion of a Health Chapter in the CHOGM Themes for the first time in many years.
We continue to raise the profile of the profession through all our advocacy channels and programmes and develop our programmes to help strengthen access to and better use of medicines throughout the Commonwealth.
A personal highlight for me this year so far has been meeting HRH the Prince of Wales alongside the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, who spoke so highly of the role pharmacists around the Commonwealth played during the pandemic and how the CPA has provided a network of support and resources at this time.
The profession is doing amazing things and the CPA has come a long way – thanks to each and every one of you for the part you play and the support you give us in so many different ways!
We hope you enjoy hearing about our latest work and activities.
Victoria Rutter,
Executive Director, CPA
In recent months, the CPA’s vision for tackling AMR in the Commonwealth has further evolved into a new programme of work called SPARC (Surveillance and Prescribing Support for Antimicrobial Stewardship Resource Capacity Building).
Funded by UK aid through the Department of Health and Social Care’s Fleming Fund , SPARC draws on the successful outcome of the Commonwealth Partnerships for Antimicrobial Stewardship (CwPAMS) programme and expands the reach of our AMR work to 22 priority Fleming Fund countries.
On the 26th and 27th of April 2022, the first SPARC training workshops were hosted in Uganda to train and empower in-country consultants (ICCs) and site champions from Nigeria, Eswatini, Malawi and Zimbabwe to help change behavior in antimicrobial use through the collection and reporting of
global point prevalence survey (GPPS) data.
ICCs from all eight CwPAMS countries Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia also joined the workshops around the use of a new antimicrobial standard treatment guideline app and had a chance to provide feedback to future programmes.
Training was led by experts in Health Psychology, Antimicrobial Stewardship, Public Health, Education, and Prescribing App Development.
Click the link below to learn more!
The 2022 CCSPF, hosted by the Commonwealth Association for Paediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition (CAPGAN), discussed aspects of how addressing commercial determinants of health can improve the health and well being of the people of the Commonwealth.
In the context of continued progress toward Universal Health Coverage in the Commonwealth, and with experiences gained from COVID-19, the 2022 CCSPF discussed both the challenges faced and innovative approaches to enhance positive aspects and reduce negative impacts of private sector activities on health.
As an outcome of the Forum, four draft recommendations were agreed by those in attendance.
- Recommendation 1: Strengthen the evidence base
- Recommendation 2: Develop tools and capacity to address the Commercial Determinants of Health
- Recommendation 3: Convene partnerships and dialogue
- Recommendation 4: Raise awareness and advocacy
Raymond Anderson, the Immediate Past President and patron of the CPA, reflected on the event,
“Commercial organizations’ first commitment is to their shareholders, not necessarily to public health. There is a need to understand and be aware of how this impacts on decision making.”
Click the link below to read more about the 2022 CCSPF.
The 80th World Congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences scheduled to take place in Seville, Spain from 18th to 22nd of September, 2022 will be hosted by The International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) and The General Pharmaceutical Council of Spain.
The CPA is an observer organization of the FIP and is forging increasingly closer working relationships. We will be sending delegation to the conference as well as submitting as abstracts.
We look forward to meeting many of our members once again face to face! If you would like to join us, please register on the FIP website.
Leaders of Commonwealth countries meet every two years for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), hosted by different member countries on a rotating basis.
Since 1971, a total of 25 meetings have been held, with the most recent being in the UK in 2018. This year’s CHOGM will take place from 20-25 June 2022, in Kigali, Rwanda, with the theme “Delivering a Common Future: Connecting, Innovating, Transforming”.
Commonwealth leaders will travel to Rwanda to reaffirm their common values and agree actions and policies to improve the lives of all their citizens. Decisions taken at CHOGM also guide the work programme of the Commonwealth Secretariat.
The CPA has been working with other members of the Commonwealth Health Professions and Partners Alliance (CHPA) to ensure that priority areas for medicines, pharmacy and health are reflected in the recommendations put forward to the heads of government.
Our advocacy efforts led to several of our recommendations being incorporated into the advocacy papers. The CPA, through their work on the Commonwealth Advisory committee for Health were also successful in their lobbying efforts with Health Ministers in getting ‘AMR’ mentioned as a priority in the highlights presented to the Heads of Government.
The CPA also host a side event at People’s Forum in the run up to CHOGM entitled ‘Emerging from the pandemic: antimicrobial resistance – a call to action’ . This session will be led by Winnie Nambatya, our in-country AMR consultant from Uganda, and supported by pharmacists from Rwanda.
It will be an opportunity to showcase the work that the organization has been doing in this space, the role of pharmacists and call for a commitment from delegates to tackle this major global health threat as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the last year, the CPA Continuing Professional Development (CPD) platform has gone from strength to strength: a mobile first platform, with bitesize modules that facilitates busy pharmacists to participate in CPD and improve the health of the community they serve.
The platform launched with its first programme in Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS). The AMS programme had been designed as several courses aimed at pharmacists within different settings, the programme recently had extra resources added to supplement the courses.
More programmes have been planned for 2022, and we will share the updates via our newsletter in the coming months. During 2021 the CPD platform reach has expanded to 14 countries with 6500 members and this number is set to increase for 2022.
Be part of the CPA CPD global pharmacy learning network. Find out more by clicking the button below.
After a break during the COVID-19 pandemic, this year we resumed our long-standing PharmAid scheme, in which recent editions of the British National Formulary are collected from around the UK and sent to our member organisations in lower middle-income countries of the Commonwealth.
The shipments go directly to the national pharmacy organisation, who distribute them to pharmacists in the country, providing access to valuable prescribing information in order to support the safe and effective use of medicines.
Having just wrapped up this year’s scheme with the successful delivery of 5,500 books to 14 Commonwealth countries across the globe, we would like to thank all those who have donated, including the Pharmaceutical Press and NICE.
After a break during the COVID-19
The nomination period for the Fellows of the Commonwealth Pharmacists Association is now open.
You can nominate a colleague who deserves to be recognised for their outstanding contribution relating to a particular aspect or aspects of their pharmacy career that has positively impacted the development of the profession or the mission and goals of the CPA in the Commonwealth.
Timeline for Nominations:
- April: Call for fellows June 30th – Deadline for nominations
- July/August – Fellows board meet
- September/October -Announcement of new CPA Fellows at the CPA Council meeting (date
TBC)
Please click on the button below to meet our current Fellows and learn more about how you can nominate a colleague.
About the CPA
The CPA works to support pharmacists in strengthening healthcare systems; through the safe and effective use of medicines, improving access and quality of medicines and vaccines, and the prevention of disease and promoting healthy lifestyles. Through their government channels, they are vocal advocates for improved access and quality of medicines and vaccines; embedding pharmacists at all levels of medicines management to achieve this goal.