04 Jan Message from the SAHPRA CEO | Dr Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela
2024 | Embracing new partnerships and overcoming challenges
As we begin 2024, I take this opportunity to wish all our stakeholders a wonderful New Year ahead. May we continue to develop partnerships, partake in robust engagements, and strive to achieve our intended goals.
I want to thank you for being part of this journey with the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) as we tirelessly work towards protecting the health and well-being of South Africans. Your partnerships, insight, and continued support allows SAHPRA to deliver on its mandate of ensuring access to health products that meet the requisite standards of quality, safety, and efficacy, thereby ensuring that the South African public is always safe.
In 2023, we began new partnerships with other African National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) to further enhance capacity building and relationship building across the continent. We understand the value in these partnerships, and we are determined to continue on this trajectory so that the Regulator is steadfast and cognisant of its vision of being an agile and responsive African health products regulator that is globally recognised as an enabler of access to safe, effective and quality health products in South Africa.
SAHPRA continues to keep the health and well-being of South Africans top of mind as we provide safety alerts, latest information on medicine recalls to awareness of counterfeit medicines in the country.
As we navigate the paths of innovation, capacity building, overcoming challenges to overall growth, I will try my best to keep you informed on key areas of development during the year. This includes, but is not limited to, licensing requirements aligned with the B-BBEE Act, working toward ISO accreditation, strengthening our regulatory processes to advance our efforts of attaining maturity level three (ML3) for medicines, and to attract and retain top talent as the entity grows in stature.
As we continue to embrace digitisation, we intend to accelerate our projects we commenced with in 2023 as well as initiate further digital refinements.
Once again, I take this opportunity to wish you well in your endeavours in the new year and thank you for being a part of the SAHPRA machinery as we embark on further growth and development in 2024.
I reflect on the words by famous boxer, Muhammad Ali, “Don’t count the days, make the days count.”
Let us all take one day at a time in working towards our goals. I welcome and encourage you to continue your journey with SAHPRA as we aspire to live our mission and vision in reaching greater heights.