TIPC

One Health and Sustainable Access to Antimicrobial Agents in Kenya: Scoping Transformative Change in Hospital Antimicrobial Stewardship Programmes

Session
Past Event
21 January 2022 15:00 (GMT)
to
21 January 2022 16:30 (GMT)

Shocking societal challenges such as COVID-19, antimicrobial resistance, and pollution are forcing Big Pharma to overwork to produce drugs to sustain the increased demand. Although this is for the good, current unsustainable systems are toothless against the disregard of the harm caused by pollution and environmental antimicrobial agents leaks that produce deadly superbugs. This calls for the exploration of new rationales and processes of policy making such as transformative innovation policy (TIP) that have potential alternative socio-technical systems in the domains of health, environment, and agriculture. Kenya is currently assessing its pharmaceutical system’s potential for transformative change.

Current solutions to the problem of antimicrobial resistance such as antimicrobial stewardship programmes (ASPs) and “One Health” promote aspects of multidisciplinary and system level impact. However, most of these solutions, especially in countries of the global south, including Kenya operate under broken pharmaceutical regulatory systems. TIP can help to address such system failures that prevent the processes of transformative change. The Kenyan project hopes to interrogate key failures such as lack of directionality, wrongly directed demand articulation, lack of policy coordination and reflexivity failure among others. In this expression of interest, we propose to have a 15-20 minutes presentation on the quality improvement of antimicrobial stewardship programmes in the global south as well as the viability of One Health concept, followed by 60 minutes panel discussion session on challenges and opportunities of achieving One Health (animal and human health, environmental health and food and agricultural health) through lens of TIP.

Ref: #27

Policy and governance for transformative change
Transformative Missions

Speakers

Frank Ndakala
Frank Sawanga Ndakala holds a PhD in Tropical and Infectious Diseases from the University of Nairobi, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Translational Medicine from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He works as a research scientist and public policy advisor in the State Department of University Education and Research (SDUE&R), Ministry of Education (MoE) in Kenya. Also, he serves as director in the Laikipia University Council and as Principal Investigator for Pfizer supported Quality Improvement project on antimicrobial stewardship in Kenya. He has served for over 15 years at Senior Management positions in the Public and private sector. Furthermore, he has previously coordinated research and projects at national, regional, and international level including collaboration with the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, UK on innovation studies. He has previously served in the Board of Management of 3 National Public Institutions and 2 University Councils.
Evelyn Wesangula
Evelyn Wesangula is a pharmacist with a Msc. Tropical and Infectious Diseases, heading the Patient Safety Division at the Ministry of Health in Kenya, who has successfully championed the development of the National Policy and Action Plan and accompanying strategies for Antimicrobial Resistance in Kenya from a multi-sectoral perspective. As the National Focal Point, she has been key in the implementation of infection prevention and control (IPC) interventions, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance activities, and antibiotic stewardship and awareness programs at a national level. As a member of the infection prevention and control team at the National Level within the Ministry of Health and she has guided the development and implementation of the National Infection Prevention and Control Guidelines and a national training curriculum for basic infection prevention and control for health care settings. Evelyn leads the Covid-19 Infection Prevention and Control work-stream within the Covid-19 task force. She has over 10 years of experience working with the Ministry of Health in Kenya. She has worked as a consultant with the World Health Organization developing guidance on establishing and sustaining multi-sectoral collaboration to support implementation of the National Action Plans and recently an integrated antimicrobial stewardship policy. She is a Chatham House, Fellow and is currently pursuing a fellowship in Mathematical modelling and analysis under the Center for Mathematical modelling and analysis (CEMA, UON) and a Fleming Fund Policy Fellow. Evelyn is committed to overcoming barriers, work across sectors to sustain changes that will reduce the burden of AMR in Kenya.
Chux Daniels
Science Policy Research Unit
Dr Chux Daniels is a Research Fellow in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Policy at Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex. His research connects STI and public policies in fostering transformative change that contributes to addressing development challenges. His areas of interest include STI, public policies, evaluation, inclusion in STI, capabilities of policymaking, entrepreneurship, indicators and metrics for STI. He is Director of the Transformative Innovation Africa Hub (TIAH) at the University of Pretoria and coordinates TIPC engagement with Africa members. His recent work on innovation policy, digitalisation, political economy, research and policy engagement programmes covers more than 10 African countries. Chux has delivered research and policy projects for major international and regional organisations including the African Union Commission (AUC), various national governments in Africa and beyond, DFID, IDRC, the UN, European Union, and the World Bank. Chux is a member AUC’s Monitoring and Evaluation Committee on the continent’s 10-year Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA-2024). He is a Visiting Fellow at the Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM), Department of Engineering and Technology Management, University of Pretoria, South Africa; a Senior Fellow at the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET); and a Member of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D (ICT for Development).