RAMALLAH, May 11, 2010(WAFA)- The French Consul General in Jerusalem, Frédéric Desagneaux signed  to finance agreement of € 5.8 million for a Central Medical Store project had been with the Minister of Planning and Administrative Development in the Palestinian Authority .

The Minister of Planning and Administrative Development of the Palestinian Authority, Ali Jarbawi,  and the French Consul General in Jerusalem, Frédéric Desagneaux, and the country director of the French Development Agency, Hervé Conan, met in the premises of the Ministry of Planning and Administrative Development. The Minister of Health, Fathi  Abou Moghli, attended the signature ceremony.

This project answered an urgent need as today there is no proper Central Medical Store in the West Bank, but three stores situated in Ramallah in different physical locations. The capacity of these stores enables them to stock only the equivalent of the drugs needed for two months.

The aim of the project funded by France is to build a Central Medical Store in Nablus with more storage space and volume within a modern building in order to increase the managing and delivering capacities. The new store will be made up of two buildings with a total of 6000 square meters of floor surface and 2500 square meters on the first floor, and will be able to fit 6 months of stock. Its construction will be managed by PECDAR.

This Central Pharmacy will help the Palestinian Ministry of Health to respond to the chronic lack of medicines and drugs the country is facing. Access to essential drugs for the Palestinian population is a key issue, stressed in the National Health Strategy recently developed by the Palestinian Authority.

The new Central medical store will apply the Good Distribution Practices (GDP) standards as defined by the World Health Organization. International Technical Assistance will be provided to help the new Central medical store to apply these best practices and to develop cost-effective management.

The objective of the project is not only to build a new efficient medical store: it will also contribute to the development of a rationalized and improved pharmaceutical sector.

Therefore, the project will directly support the Ministry of Health in its ongoing process of reforming the whole National Pharmaceutical Policy. It will support the General Directorate of Pharmacy (GDP) of the Ministry to fully play its role of regulator for the sector, focusing in particular on quality assurance for drugs.

Lastly, the project will also develop on a pilot basis the rational use of drugs. That component will be implemented by An Najjah University. So far the cost of drugs is not taken into consideration for the prescriptions. Some pilot experiences will be developed to introduce cost/efficiency ratio, with a view to reduce the cost for the Palestinian Authority of specific expensive drugs, mainly for oncology treatment, which represent more than half of the drugs expenditures of the Ministry of Health.