Workshop on"WHO Rapid Bench-marking of the National Regulatory Authority for Lao People's Democratic Republic" 

To make the ethnic and gender receive equality in access to health services thoroughly and safely, and to promote better health of people by being taken a defense early and treatment is important to ensure the availability of essential medicines to consumers with reasonable price, especially for poor people in remote area. Medicines have Good quality, safety and effective and reasonable used by the public health officials and consumers.

In order to ensure the achievement of the objectives and goals mentioned above, the Food and Drug Department on behalf of the National Medicines Authority of the Ministry of Health plays an important role in managing, monitoring and overseeing pharmaceutical and medical products to ensure quality, efficiency and safety. Food and Drug Administration to manage a comprehensive system is controlled from central to local, permission to establish factories, companies import - export, wholesale, pharmacy, registered products, to monitor the distribution, monitoring, security, medication management pilot clinical (CT) and control quality, which Laos has more challenges in the management of pharmaceutical and cosmetic products Medical products.

Therefore, the World Health Organization, together with the Food and Drug Department held a workshop on the assessment of the National Health Management System of the Ministry of Health, by using a comparative tool of the World Health Organization "WHO Rapid Benchmarking of the National Regulatory Authority for Lao People's Democratic Republic" during 12-14 September 2017. The workshop was Honored to attend the opening ceremony by Dr. Somthavy Changvisommid the Director General of Food and Drug Department, MoH and participated by relevant organization such as: expert of WHO, Traditional Medicine Institute, Department of Food and Drug Administration, Department of Planning and International Cooperation, Department of Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Disease Control, Centers and Diseases (Disease Prevention Program), Food and Drug Quality Control Center, NCLE, Bureau of Food and Drug Inspection.

The purpose of the workshop was to review progress in implementing management system of medicine specifically, assess the management of medicines including vaccines in Laos, which the World Health Organization suggested FDD to improve some points related to the results of management medicine assessment in 2015; this workshop will assess for system to manage medical products by using specific tool develop by WHO (WHO Global Benchmarking Tool) for 2017. And after the assessment, WHO will help us determine the essential components and gaps which are risks that need to need to be improved to make the effective management on pharmaceuticals and medical products.