[afro-nets] Quality Network for Rational Drug Management in PHC

[Reinhard Huss <reinhard.huss@urz.uni-heidelberg.de>]

Quality Network for Rational Drug Management in PHC
 
 
Quality Network for Rational Drug Management in Primary Health
Care in Asia and Europe (Qu4RAD)
--------------------------------------------------------------
 
The Qu4RAD network is an international collaboration that aims 
to assist people (providers, users, citizens) improve their man-
agement of medicines by facilitating communication, experimenta-
tion and learning combining scientific, cultural and moral-
ethical reasoning in a 'glocal' (global and local) context. 
 
There are several e-mail discussion forums such as e-drug, e-
farmacos, e-med, e-lek and india-drug and websites with similar 
objectives in the internet. Qu4RAD is an important addition 
based on the open space approach and the ancient Greek tradition 
of the ?Agora? where citizens come together to discuss issues 
which concern the common good of all people in the global age of 
the internet. 
 
The specific features of the network are that 
* Participants determine the topics and the time to discuss and 
exchange information;
* Citizens, consumers and providers committed to collective 
health services join in discussion groups to define and resolve 
issues about the common good of public health;
* Universalism meets particularism in the link between global 
and local issues such as patents and the access to essential 
medicines or universal scientific evidence and the particular 
local application of this evidence.
 
The goals of the network are to
* promote universal access to medicines according to the needs 
of the people,
* encourage the best use of medicines according to scientific, 
cultural and moral reasoning which we understand as rational 
reasoning,
* improve knowledge and skills in health professionals, patients 
and citizens for the rational use of medicine,
* obtain sustainable resources for the functioning of the net-
work.
 
The network has been developed as a partnership between the
* Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at 
the University Catholic Louvain of Brussels, Belgium, 
* Department of Tropical Hygiene and Public Health (ATHOEG) at 
the University of Heidelberg, Germany, 
* Indian Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR), 
Jaipur, India and
* Institute of Philippine Culture (IPC) of Ateneo De Manila Uni-
versity in the Philippines.
 
The project is partially funded by the Asia Information Technol-
ogy and Communications programme of the European Commission. 
Therefore the name "Quality Network for Rational Drug Management 
in Primary Health Care in Asia and Europe" limits its geographi-
cal coverage to 2 continents. However, we would like to invite 
interested stakeholders from all continents and international 
organisations to participate in the network. 
 
At the moment the language of website communication is English. 
However, we are planning to have a multilingual network using 
other languages such as Hindi, Tagalog, French and German in or-
der to promote access for a wide range of people. The responsi-
bility for the development of different language websites will 
be with the interested stakeholders. 
 
In future we want to develop other features of the website as 
has been proposed during the discussion at the ICIUM (Interna-
tional Conference on the Improved Use of Medicines) 2004 confer-
ence in Chiang Mai. This will include the collection and compi-
lation of technical documents, the download of important docu-
ment files, a glossary of public health pharmacology, a data 
base of previous discussion groups, the monitoring of website 
use and the creation of a chat room. 
 
If you are interested in Qu4RAD, please visit our website at: 
http://www.qu4rad.net
 
Moreover we would like to invite you to register as a user or to 
join as a partner in the network.