A bill passed in the Senate yesterday will bring about the “most significant transformation of the Barbados Drug Service” since its inception in 1980, says Senator The Most Honourable Jerome Walcott.
The Senior Minister Coordinating Social and Environmental Policy, speaking during debate on the Barbados Medical Products Bill, 2026, said the legislation would result in a metamorphosis in Barbados’ pharmaceutical regulatory system.
The modern, autonomous national regulatory authority will be responsible for regulating medicines and other health devices, health products and ensuring that all products used in Barbados meet international standards for quality, safety and efficacy.
Walcott added that the purpose of the bill was also to improve access to safe and effective medicines and strengthen public health protection, while supporting pharmaceutical manufacturing and research that would contribute to the life sciences sector.
The reform, which started four years ago, was also part of the Government’s broad agenda to modernise the health regulatory system, and position Barbados as a regional leader in regulatory science, said the former minister of health. It began when during the COVID-19 pandemic, Barbados and other small, developing, lower-middle-aged income countries were exposed to the vulnerability that they depended heavily on importing medicines, and the inequity in access to vaccines and pharmaceuticals, medical devices, even nasal swabs.
Difficult situation
“You had the funds, you wanted to buy, you wanted to procure but, for instance, you were not being assisted by the countries which produced and exported. At one stage we ordered ventilators, paid for them and then we had to be reimbursed because they were stopped from being exported.
“We’ve had issues in the Caribbean. We had to borrow from each other, nasal swabs, continuously send texts, and all sorts of things like this happened. During that period, we weren’t ready for coming out of COVID. We recognised, as a Government, that in a situation like this, we would have to mitigate against this happening again,” Walcott told the Senate.
The trigger, he added, came during the visit of President of Rwanda Paul Kagame in April 2022 and the issue of equitable access to vaccines and pharmaceuticals came up.
He said Kagame explained how Rwanda embarked on a process to mitigate the situation by establishing vaccine and pharmaceutical manufacturing with German company BioNtech. That was followed with a visit by Barbados to the launch of the facility in Kigali.
Eventually through contact with the German consultants who developed a white book, and assistance through the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, Barbados embarked on the establishing of regulatory pharmaceutical production.
“If you’re going to go to a manufacturer, you have to reach certain levels. Barbados is very rudimentary. We are at Level 1 at this point. So then we started working on the draft bill, and this was, I wouldn’t like to say, tedious, but it was indeed hard work,” Walcott said.
The Barbados Pharmaceutical Inc., headed by attorney Ramon Alleyne, was created.
In addition, HeDPAC, a health development partnership between Africa and the Caribbean, was created, leading to a number of meetings and a delegation visiting Ethiopia to recruit health workers for Barbados.
Among the products this country is expected to manufacture are medicines, vaccines, biologics, medical devices, in vitro diagnostics and herbal medicines, as well as medicated cosmetics.
In addition, the regulatory functions, said Walcott, speaks to marketing and authorisation of medical products currently done through the Barbados Drug Service.
Pharmaco vigilance and post-market surveillance will also fall under the regulatory functions of the authority.
Barbados, said the senior minister, was on a strong trajectory towards establishing a more internationally-aligned medicines regulatory authority. ( AC)
