IMANI’s Executive Director, Franklin Cudjoe and Former Deputy Director of Food and Drugs Board, Mr Kwamina Van Ess, met with Ghana’s Health Minister to discuss health issues.
The discussion focused on Ghana’s position on the WHO’s Inter Governmental Working Group on Intellectual Property as it relates to development of medicines and progression of the National Alcohol Policy work IMANI initiated.
The discussions with the Ghanaian Minister of Health on Ghana’s position, revealed a rare sensible position – that breaking patents have the effect of weakening Africa’s ability to protect its medical breakthroughs …

Alisa Hotel, North Ridge, Thursday, November 29, 2007
Two and a half months earlier, IMANI convened the first workshop that brought alcoholic beverage manufacturers and sector regulator, the Food and Drugs Board together to lay the groundwork for what should be in a national alcohol policy.
The meeting was fruitful, as both Industry and the FDB, were later to use “co-regulation”, a negotiating tool coined from the deliberations and applied successfully to solve the misunderstanding over the temporary advertisement ban on alcoholic beverages.
However, there was plenty of work to be done. …