Mauritania: A community pharmacy supported by PPM will open in early 2022 in Tekane

More than five years after the project was launched by the Association Contre la Tuberculose et les Maladies Endémiques (ACTUME), the Pharmacie Communautaire et Valorisation des Plantes Médicinales (Community Pharmacy and Medicinal Plant Development) in the commune of Tékane will welcome its first patients during the first quarter next year.

This pharmacy, whose foundation stone was laid in February 2018, will facilitate access to care for approximately 17,000 patients and will be a place of orientation, information and exchange dedicated to the health of the most disadvantaged. Similarly, it will ensure the improvement of the quality of health care thanks to a traceability of medicines and a permanent strategy of health prevention within this commune of Tékane, located in the southwest of Mauritania, not far from the border with Senegal.

Taking into account health ancestral practices, the project to develop medicinal plants was a natural choice to complement the pharmacy offer through traditional methods of care. This project became integrated into the design of the pharmacy which includes a green space, a social space, a training room, a research laboratory in herbal medicine and storage and treatment areas.

PPM, in French-speaking Africa countries, has long supported ACTUME in its work in Mauritania, in particular its Health Caravans, which, from 2010 to 2018, have enabled thousands of patients to receive free consultations and medicines. For example, in 2017, this caravan mobilized more than 90 health professionals during a weekend and consultations were carried out in various specialties (general medicine, stomatology, ophthalmology, pediatrics …) for some 4,500 needy patients.

This community pharmacy, whose construction was interrupted for several months because of Covid, will be completed by a health center financed by the Swiss Foundation.

In Mauritania, ACTUME received support for this project from the Association Santé Tékane, the Cooperative des Femmes de Tékane and GIE DIAPPO (health agents) in Tékane, as well as from the Ministry of Health in Mauritania, the Tékane Health Center and the Tékane Town Hall.

It was financed by FORIM, CDC Développement Solidaire, COALLIA (5000 €), Mir France / LAMIRAU Technologies, the Microfinance Program of the Global Environment Facility at the UNDP in Mauritania, the Maison de l’Artemisia, Pharma Product Manufacturing PPM as well as by online donations..