Creating development goal indicators – bridging data and outcomes (African Region)

Summary of “Creating development goal indicators – bridging data and outcomes” events

FIP member organisations of each region selected some of the FIP Development Goals which are the priorities of their region. Africa region: DG 1 (Academic capacity), DG 3 (Quality assurance), DG 9 (Continuing professional development strategies), and DG 18 (Access to medicines, devices, and services).

FIP Global Pharmaceutical Observatory (GPO) team members have designed and developed indicators to support tracking progress towards the development goals.​ This globally validated list of indicators across all DGs will monitor progress worldwide and support each country in the process of transformation of their workforce, education, practice, and pharmaceutical science. FIP is developing a framework for selecting indicators and a monitoring and evaluating DGs.  This will enable the design of global Atlas (data visualisation) dashboards that will drive and inform improvement and monitor trends over time. 

The process for tracking the development goals is first is to select priority DGs by identifying general, broad areas where there are active, ongoing national policies or projects mapped to the FIP DGs. The next step is to select the right indicators. Indicators are useful to provide measurable progress towards DGs, identify areas that need attention and support continuous improvement. After that, a monitoring and evaluation framework can be developed. Lastly, continuous development can be provided by regularly updating Atlas dashboards to present how the data changes over time. Atlas dashboards can include an actionable overview of a limited set of key indicators with novel ways of bringing attention to those areas that are advancing the profession or experiencing challenges. These have significant potential to support regular reviews of DG progress and improve the data quality.

African Region Panel Discussion on DG priorities and data requirements:

• All FIP DGs are relevant. The first and the main priority from FIP DGs is the DG 1 (Academic capacity). Academic capacity is the first step for developing the profession. There is a need to collect the data on education such as the number of people in academia, university lecturers, and hours of courses. The second one is the strong regulation for quality assurance of the medicines.
• In Ghana, there is a need to improve access to quality medicines (DG 18). DG 18 (Access to medicines, devices, and services) is the main priority in the continent.
• Three most prioritized goals are: 1) DG 4 (Advanced and specialist development), to enforce the law established in 2012; 2) DG 5 (Competency development) to standardize the competency of pharmacy graduates; 3) DG 20 (Digital health) to control substandard and falsified medicines.
• The Pharmacy Council of Ghana is also developing the e-pharmacy policy and subsequently have developed national electronic pharmacy platform.
• For DG 4 (Advanced and specialist development), there’s a need to get the baseline data in terms of available capacities and specialists. After having the baseline data as well as the needs assessment results, pharmacies can be trained based on their interests and we can track the implementation after the training.