The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Celestino Obua welcomed members and thanked them for enduring to come and introduced himself as a Professor of Pharmacology. He said he is proud to head one of the top Universities in Pharm biotechnology in Africa.
The Vice-Chancellor promised members to take them to the botanical garden, incubate exhibition, production Lab among others.
He said that the PHARMBIOTRAC’s key activities are to train a critical mass of scientists who can demonstrate high-level utilization of herbal medicine and also support herbalists in the production of herbal medicine and more so he thanked WHO for coming to inspect PHARMBIOTRAC premises and outcomes. He showed them the main buildings in the University where he said Mbarara University has six faculties and two institutes.
Vice Chancellor added that the government sent out calls to support projects so he was grateful to the PHARMBIOTRAC team that responded to such calls.
Finally, the Vice-Chancellor shared with members in the meeting about some of the collaborators of MUST namely; Belgian University and Masscheutics General Hospital that have continued their support despite the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Prof MG Matsabisa the chairperson REACT spoke on behalf of the delegation and presented the mission and objectives of REACT/WHO. These include
Is to create scientific awareness of Herbal Medicine
To promote Herbal Medicine as a first choice
To promote the healing of humans
He further thanked the university administration for their warm welcome, recognized the Vice Chancellor’s full engagement into university activities. Prof MG, then requested regional adviser on Traditional Medicine Prof Ossy M.J Kasilo to say a word in relation to the subject matter
Kasilo said herb medicine is highly used in Africa, we just have to work as a team in Africa to create our own herb pharmacies, she further said we have our own soloutions as Africa. We just need to know when where and how to put our resources. She pointed out that MUST stood out in terms of producing herb medicine in the region she complimented the work that pharmbiotract is doing Notworthstanding the community engagement. Prof. Kasilo thanked the team at pharmbiotrac for the work done in rukarara community in Bushenyi District.
Prof. Joseph Okeibunor who was the head of the World Health Organisation delegation thanked members that he was in Uganda ready to undertake the proposal of practice, lessons learned, identify challenges they are facing, and others on the way forward.
He said they had meetings with various stakeholders in the country, national ethical committees, and others to develop a plan of action on the areas they identified and need support in the organization.
He again said that to accelerate the pace of conducting and advancing research in traditional medicine, there is a need for more collaboration for the common good.
He concluded his remarks by introducing the team he had come along with.
Madam Okuna Jeuille oteba representative from the Ministry of Health apologized for keeping the Vice-Chancellor around and the audience. She said that she has been coming to Uganda for monitoring and Evaluation missions and has always found Ugandans very hospitable. During their visit to Rukararwe, the found people with a lot of anxiety and had prepared a lot with the community which they could not avoid and ended up delaying the next meeting with PHARMBIOTRAC-MUST.
She reckoned that traditional medicine has been here for a long time and Covid-19 has changed the call and now the problem is standardization/packaging, research, and development, challenges in knowledge capacity, human resources, and resources available.
- Brenda Nakazibwe represented Minister and said that emphasis was on universities majorly MUST.
- She said that they started in 2020 when His Excellency the President of the Republic of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni Tibuhaburwa directed that they become special collaborators in Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Uganda Virus Research Institute, NCRII, CNPCT, and NDA to reserve the science.
- They made sure that everyone benefited along the value chain like building synagogues, training synagogues, science, and Covid-19 drugs.