In 2006, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), and the Netherlands-African partnership for Capacity development and Clinical interventions Against Poverty-related diseases (NACCAP) organised a Stakeholder Forum on the challenges of treating poverty-related diseases. It brought together representatives from academia, industry, governments and non-governmental organisations to debate: “Connecting the Chain: Towards a comprehensive approach to delivering affordable medicines against poverty-related diseases”.
Ian Boulton was asked to make a presentation at this meeting entitled “After Regulatory Approval, the Challenges Really Start” to explain to the audience the supply chain issues that have to be tackled by the pharmaceutical industry. This was with special reference to the supply of artemisinin-containing combination treatments for malaria.