Tanzania Food and Drug Authority reached level 3 of WHO Benchmarking Programme

To strengthen their regulatory functions, Tanzania Food and Drug Authority (TFDA) and the Zanzibar Food and Drug Agency (ZFDA) benchmarking  was done in May by a team of Technical officers from WHO HQ and Country Offices and experts from some countries in Africa and Europe as The World Health Organization (WHO) plays a important role in supporting countries in strengthening their necessary systems and promoting fair access to quality, safe, efficacious, and affordable medical products and health products.

 

In support to identify strengths as well as areas for improvement the benchmarking is necessary and along with it at the same time development of an Institutional Development Plan (IDP) to build on strengths and support areas for improvement is done. The WHO provides technical support in the implementation of the IDP followed by continued monitoring of progress and outcome.

 

From the benchmark results, Tanzania Food and Drug Authority has been divided into maturity level 3, according to its capacity to perform the necessary regulatory functions as follows:

 

Maturity level 1: The agency has some elements of regulatory system existing.

 

Maturity level 2: Evolving national regulatory system that partially performs necessary regulatory functions.

 

Maturity level 3: Stable, well-functioning and coordinated regulatory system.

 

Maturity level 4: Regulatory system operating at advanced level of performance and continuous improvement.

 

The benchmarking was a part of the continuous monitoring and follow-up to evaluate the level of IDP implementation by 2018 and to determine the current level of its maturity.

Tanzania Food and Drug Authority was previously benchmarked in 2011 and 2016 by a WHO team of experts for its important and necessary functions and in the implementation of proposed activities in the medicines and vaccines regulation as part of the IDP.