Bar­ba­dos has signed a part­ner­ship agree­ment with Nige­ria to ad­vance lo­cal phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pro­duc­tion, strength­en reg­u­la­to­ry co­op­er­a­tion, and ex­pand re­gion­al mar­ket ac­cess across the Caribbean, Latin Amer­i­ca, as well as the Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty of West African States (ECOW­AS).

The Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) was signed be­tween Bar­ba­dos Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals Inc. (BPI) and Nige­ria’s Pres­i­den­tial Ini­tia­tive for Un­lock­ing the Health­care Val­ue Chain (PVAC), es­tab­lish­ing a com­pre­hen­sive frame­work for col­lab­o­ra­tion in four ar­eas, name­ly in­dus­tri­al ca­pac­i­ty and hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment, mar­ket ac­cess and mar­ket shap­ing,  clin­i­cal tri­als co­op­er­a­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry, fi­nanc­ing, and pol­i­cy align­ment

A gov­ern­ment state­ment said that the agree­ment signed in Nige­ria, fol­lows months of high-lev­el en­gage­ments, in­clud­ing min­is­te­r­i­al dis­cus­sions held be­tween Bar­ba­dos’ Min­is­ter of Health, Dr. Jerome Wal­cott, and Nige­ria’s Co­or­di­nat­ing Min­is­ter of Health and So­cial Wel­fare, Pro­fes­sor Muham­mad Ali Pate.