A high level OECS ARV Drug Supply management workshop will be held in June 2007. The OECS Secretariat’s Pharmaceutical Procurement Services Unit (OECSPPS) is organizing the event. The panel of experts at the ARV Management meeting includes HIV/AIDS research specialists from Cuba, Barbados the World Health Organisation and Management Sciences for Health.

The workshop intends to empower pharmacists on the latest treatment protocols of antiretroviral drugs. This is to help patients maintain the required 95 percent adherence rate to the medication to decrease the possibility of resistance. Delegates will discuss a systematic approach in reporting adverse reaction to ARV’s known as pharmacovigilance. To this end, the OECS PPS, soon to become the sub-region’s Pharmacovigilance Centre, will set up that system of reporting at the June workshop. The forecasting of ARV drugs poses specific difficulties because the treatment involves three drugs simultaneously.

Director of the OECS PPS Francis Burnet says administering the drugs to infected children is also a delicate matter because of how weight tends to vary frequently among children. Hence the importance of having a steady and uninterrupted supply of first line and second line drugs for the treatment of patients: "We need to forecast accurately so that when we invite suppliers to tender they could import into their warehouses what we plan to purchase so that our purchases will closely match what we forecasted on our tender documents. The regional workshop has to be supported by follow-up country national country workshops. We plan to train one or two members of staff as super trainers to roll out the the software in each OECS country. It’s a very sophisticated spreadsheet with a number of formulae to assisting countries to forecast.”

Christophe Rerat is a sub-regional advisor for the Pan American Health Organisation PAHO. He says PAHO will be playing a special role in the ARV workshop including the area of pharmacovigilanc:.“It’s a critical issue for us to work with two main actors namely: Cuba and Suriname to support the establishment of the Pharmacovigilance Centre. During the meeting we will also have a four day session regarding quantification and forecasting of ARVs.”

The ARV supply management workshop is hoping to attract Clinical care nurses, fifty pharmacists, nine physicians (or Clinical Care Coordinators) and the managers of Central Medical Stores in the OECS. A consortium of partners will be sponsoring the workshop. These include PANCAP, PAHO and the OECS HIV/Aids Programme Unit, HAPU. The workshop in June is a direct follow up to a previous Castries meeting in May 2006.That meeting recognised the need for specialized training for OECS Staff regarding the forecasting and quantification of ARVs for treating HIV/AIDS infected persons.