AHETI is a pan-African initiative aimed at eradicating poverty diseases endemic in Africa, namely, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV and AIDS, hepatitis B and diarrhoea by promoting efforts and policies to ramp up local production of pharmaceuticals in Africa.
AHETI’s efforts are mainly driven by an ethical imperative and social justice: people should not be denied access to life-saving or health-promoting interventions for unfair reasons, including economic or social causes. Access to quality and safe medicines has been designated as a basic human right by the World Health Organization. The relevance has been given further weight by its inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target 3.b.
AHETI is a fruit of the work of the Africa Task Force of the Vatican COVID-19 Commission and was founded by The Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network – Africa (JENA) together with its sister organisation, the Africa Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN) in collaboration with the Association of Sisterhoods of Kenya (AOSK), Association of Religious of Uganda (ARU), the Major Superiors of Religious in Ghana and the Zambia Association of Sisterhoods (ZAS) and other concerned individuals and groups who include the Africa Union Development Agency – NEPAD and PATH.
Programs under AHETI
AHETI is a pan-African initiative aimed at eradicating poverty diseases endemic in Africa, namely, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV and AIDS, hepatitis B and diarrhoea by promoting efforts and policies to ramp up local production of pharmaceuticals in Africa.
In order that the AHETI programs are realised AHETI needs USD 6 Billion over the next 3 years. AHETI has put in place a competent Board of Trustees to manage the fund and a Secretariat to ensure programs are implemented. The fund shall be a revolving fund and not a sinking fund. We calls on all Governments, Donor Agencies, Big Pharma Philanthropists and all persons looking to see the AHETI vision realised, to put in money into the fund.
The aim is to not only ensure local production of pharmaceuticals on the continent, but also develop Precision Medicine not just for Africa but also for the rest of the world. These biomedical research facilities will help Africa build a database for Genomic Data (DNA data) which is necessary in informing the development of therapies in precision medicine. As you may know, Africa contributes only 1% of the global genomic data that is used in developing drugs.
This is a one stop shop for all Health Informatics in Africa. This data will help in epidemiology and also in the developing both preventive and curative medicine in Africa. Health information systems represent a key component of national health systems. However, the capabilities for leveraging information for improved health are limited and unevenly distributed in the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region.
Pharmaceutical Tech labs will be situated at each of the four Hubs of the African continent and shall be a shared resource where all the molecular and clinical trials for the biological medicine will be done. The shared resource concept will discourage the need for every pharmaceutical manufacturer to develop own labs, further reducing the cost of production.
AHETI will incentivise pharmaceutical innovation and production in and for Africa through the provision of sustainable rewards for innovators looking to develop diagnostics and pursue drug candidates that have significant prophylactic or therapeutic potential but are not commercially attractive under the current regime. This localization of drug manufacturing would increase medicine access and also help health systems in Africa lessen their vulnerability to supply chain disruptions.
The neediest of the pharmaceuticals are the poor and those in remote areas since logistics and poor infrastructure both physical and distribution channels make drugs very expensive. Aheti will work on Distribution model that will adopt latest technology to reduce the logistics cost and also the inventory costs of over ordering for fear of stockouts. It will also use Community Health Workers to do the last mile and hence also creating economic income for the poor in remote areas.
AHETI shall offer transformational courses and programs to develop the political decision makers, health managers and biomedical researchers across Africa. The programs will be run in partnership with both local and global partners such as Yale, Georgetown, Big Pharma, Public policy experts etc.