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Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia (3rd from left) with Dr. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu (left), Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare (2nd from left), Professor Kwaku Ohene-Frimpong (right), and Dr. Vas Narasimhan (2nd) right) after the signing ceremony
The government of Ghana has signed a protocol agreement with Novartis, a global pharmaceutical company, to create a new public-private partnership to improve diagnosis and speed up treatment for people with sickle cell disease.
Health Minister Kwaku Agyemang-Manu signed for the Ministry of Health, while the Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, signed for his institution .
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Professor Kwaku Ohene-Frempong, president of the Ghana Sickle Cell Foundation and coordinator of the Newborn Screening Program for Sickle Cell Disease, has signed a contract with Novartis Chief Executive Officer Dr. Vas Narasimhan for the other allied institutions. , signing for his outfit.
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The signing took place on the sidelines of the ongoing 2019 edition of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
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Agyemang-Manu said collaboration with the pharmaceutical company would help improve health care benefits and reduce the number of preventable deaths.
"We are pleased to be working with the Sickle Cell Foundation and Novartis to fight sickle cell disease in Ghana," he said.
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For his part, Dr. Nsiah-Asare said the partnership with Novartis would bring many benefits to people with sickle cell disease, as it would reduce treatment costs and improve access to advanced research equipment.
This collaboration, he said, would also enable Novartis to test innovative treatments for sickle in the country, an initiative that he said would also provide data for further studies.
He explained that the partnership had already paid off and that Novartis had submitted, last October, Hydroxyurea, the current standard treatment for severe sickle cell disease, for the registration of the specific indication of sickle cell disease in Ghana. .
He hinted that the Food and Drugs Authority had since authorized marketing authorization for Hydroxyurea to be made available to patients in Ghana this year.
"Discussions are underway to include the drug and badociated laboratory tests in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), as well as to make it a national program, with direct distribution by the Ministry of Health," said Dr. Nsiah-Asare.
Foundation of sickle cell disease
Professor Ohene-Frempong said that Ghana was one of the few African countries to have a neonatal screening program, adding that there was not a single country that had tested all of its children against sickle cell disease.
As a result, he said: "We are losing hundreds of thousands of babies each year in Africa without even a diagnosis of the disease and, therefore, this collaboration will draw the world's attention to this disease."
Dr. Narasimhan said his organization has a long-term commitment to ensuring that its medicines and health care in general are accessible to as many patients as possible.
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Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, attending the World Economic Forum, thanked Novartis for working with the Ghana government to improve access to and quality of health care.
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