Zimpapers Logo

Rejoice Makoni Herald Correspondent

Zimbabwe in partnership with the Cuban Embassy will soon establish manufacturing plants for vaccines and other drugs in order to improve the country’s local drug industry, a Cabinet Minister said.

Zimbabwe has been a net importer of pharmaceutical products owing to the collapse of the industry due to economic hardships that saw most of the companies close or scale down production.

Cuba already has a vibrant bio-technology industry that produces medicines and vaccines. The country exports medicines to more than 40 countries world-wide and a transfer of skills into Zimbabwe would help grow the vision in line with the National Development Strategy 1.

Speaking after meeting with Cuban Charge d’affaires Mrs Yoisy Ford Garcia in Harare yesterday, Minister of Health and Child Care Minister Dr Douglas Mombeshora said the Government was working with the Cuban government to improve the country’s health sector.

“We are trying to learn from Cuba and see if we can set manufacturing plants in Zimbabwe for vaccines and other. It is the way to go, instead of importing vaccines and drugs we can manufacture them locally and cut our import bill,” he said.

Dr Mombeshora said plans for comprehensive medical outreach with Cuban specialist doctors were at an advanced stage in the hard to reach areas of the country.

“We have been doing outreach programmes but only concentrating on vaccinations. We will be conducting medical outreach programmes targeting treatment of ordinary citizens who walk long distances to health facilities. As you know, some of our health facilities are still far apart. We want to bridge that gap with outreach programmes. These programmes will not be just for immunisation but include patient treatment where we have specialists looking after sick people in our rural areas.

“We are already working together with the Cuban medical brigade which is the 14th brigade to be in our country comprised of 11 specialist doctors and five electro medical engineers. The important thing is that we are going to continue with the cooperation, but most importantly we are going to explore an area of training our doctors as specialists.

“It is an area that is of interest to us. We are going to fine-tune it and see how we can start the programme, maybe start by sending our doctors for further training specialisation in Cuba and see how we can improve our training locally by getting trainers from Cuba to come to Zimbabwe to help us.”

Mrs Yoisy Ford Garcia said they were ready to support and contribute to the country’s health sector.

“Our doctors are very happy working with their Zimbabwean counterparts. We are ready to support and contribute to the health sector and our doctors are ready to work in remote areas of Zimbabwe to conduct the medical outreach programmes,” she said.

“Cuba and Zimbabwe have a strong relationship that dates back before independence. We have our doctors working across the country’s hospitals as part of our intention to improve the health sector.”

Zimbabwe and Cuba have shared good relations that date back into the liberation war era. The Caribbean island offered training ground for liberation war fighters during the struggle for the country’s independence and later offered to train teachers and health professionals.