First and foremost, I wish to thank the organisers, both Taylor’s University and APEC Harmonization Center (AHC) for inviting me to record a message in my capacity as the Senior Director of Pharmaceutical Services Programme of the Ministry of Health Malaysia.
The Ministry of Health Malaysia through its Pharmaceutical Services Programme has endeavoured to uphold the highest commitment to all the harmonisation efforts involving pharmaceutical products both at the regional level and the international arena. The many milestones achieved by the Asean Pharmaceutical Product Working Group under the leadership of Pharmaceutical Services Programme of Malaysia stand testimony to this.
With massive technological advancements and innovations in the pharmaceutical sector coupled with the enhanced connectivity among countries, today’s globalised world poses special challenges to the supply chain security of pharmaceutical products. Regulators and industry alike have been grappling with these complexities for many years. Concerted effort and cooperation are needed from all stakeholders to find solutions that are simple, practical and that do not require huge resources in terms of cost and manpower needs.
The current initiative by Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to promote Global Medical Product Quality and Supply Chain Security among its member economies is an effort that is aimed at creating regulatory convergence in these matters ultimately ensuring patient safety.
This initiative has now evolved into a mature programme with the development of appropriate processes, procedures, and tools directed at enhancing global medical product quality and supply chain security. Ten major areas have been identified and the current training programme at Taylor’s University focuses on three of these areas.
A training of this nature is immensely valuable in creating awareness among regulators and industry alike of the vulnerability in the supply chain and the danger it poses to patient safety. The various speakers with expertise and extensive experience in these areas will no doubt identify these issues clearly, provide in-depth analysis and articulate strategies and measures that can be adopted to ensure integrity in supply chain.
I wish to congratulate Taylor’s University and AHC for organising this pilot training course in its maiden effort and hope that it will continue to organise more of such trainings once endorsed as a CoE in Supply Chain Security for Medical Products.
Dr Ramli Zainal,
Senior Director of Pharmaceutical Services, Ministry of Health, Malaysia
This message was originally printed in the 2019 COE Pilot Training Booklet